


in a world we must defend

by GuardianKarenTerrier



Category: Miraculous Ladybug, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pokemon Fusion, Angst, Coughing, Families of Choice, Found Family, Gen, Hypothermia, ITS A CANON TAG NOW YES, Parent Plagg (Miraculous Ladybug), Pneumonia, Pokemon Journey, Respiratory Illness, Runaway Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, company towns, haha that one too, i am only using pokemon from the first 151 so that this is more accessible, i will fill that tag myself, if you are like me and still replaying your copy of Yellow like once a year, runaway adrien agreste
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2020-10-13 03:04:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20575394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianKarenTerrier/pseuds/GuardianKarenTerrier
Summary: Marinette hadn't been sure, originally, that leaving on her Pokémon journey so much later than all her friends was such a good idea.  She hadn't been ready to leave when they did, though, and she's ready now.And then she finds a boy in the woods the first night she makes camp, and then she discovers something terribly wrong with the very first town they try to visit, and-It's a good thing she waited, after all, because something isdeeplywrong in their region, and she's going to need the friends she's finding along the way.





	1. but you don't have to feel alone

**Author's Note:**

> betas asleep post the pokémon au 
> 
> i love pokemon aus, but i stalled out waaaay back at yellow (and am still replaying yellow periodically), so this fic is limited to the first 151 pokemon for anyone ELSE whos done the thing.

"Do you have everything you need, Marinette?" her mother asks her, putting one hand on each of her shoulders and looking her in the eyes. "You know you can call us at any time, and if you _have_ forgotten anything you can't easily find along your way we can always send it to you."

Marinette laughs, leaning into her mother's hands and then stepping back. 

Maman's Nidorino headbutts her shin, very gently, and then takes a step back as well.

"I think I'm ready, Maman, Papa. Tikki made me take a lot of the fabric supplies back out, actually." Marinette smiles sheepishly. "I guess it was a bit much to bring with."

"Honey, you know you don't _have_ to go, right?" her papa asks her anxiously, straightening from where he'd been checking over her bedroll himself. "I know it must be a little alienating to still be at home when your friends have left. But it's okay, you know, if going on a journey just isn't for you. You can always just stay and run the bakery with us!"

"Papa," Marinette says, gently. She reaches out and finds Tikki beside her, right where her Clefairy nearly always is. "I want to do this. I'm more than old enough, and I have Tikki. We'll be okay."

"You know how he worries, dear." Maman picks up Marinette's pack, far more easily than someone who didn't know her would expect, and hands it to her daughter. "Remember to check in with us, and Marinette- have fun."

"I will." Marinette takes a moment longer to hug both her parents in turn. 

Then she shrugs on her pack and bedroll and makes her way out of town.

She can't deny feeling a bit of a twinge when none of her friends are there either to cheer her on or even join her for her journey. They're only not here because Marinette waved them all off on their _own_ journeys ages ago, after all. 

Well, most of them. Nino had left earlier than the rest.

She still wishes Nino had told her when he'd left. Nino hadn't told _anyone_, though, he'd just taken Wayzz and stolen away in the dead of night. Marinette understands why but-

_I wanted to go with him_.

She sighs and Tikki looks up at her. "Oh- I was thinking about Nino, Tikki, sorry." She waves out at the expanse of grass they have to trek through to make the woods before nightfall. "I know he said he didn't want me to feel pressured, and he might be right, but- I don't know, Teek, I should have noticed how he was acting just before he left. I guess I just- always assumed we'd still go together. Which was never fair to him, I knew he didn't want to wait like we did." Marinette winces and scratches the back of her head. 

She decides now isn't the time to dwell on it and starts plotting the quickest course into the forest.

Technically, they don't need to travel through the woods, and sticking to the marked paths is probably safer, but Marinette _wants _to be in the forest.

That if she swings wide enough around Mt. Moon it puts her a Rock's Throw away from the Agreste Mansion has nothing to do with that. Nothing at all. Sure, it's a private residence and very much closed to the public, but if Marinette wants a look at her favourite fashion designer's home there's no one here to know but Tikki.

They see several Rattata and Pidgey and even an Ekans as they makes their way across the field, but even if Marinette had brought any Pokéballs with her Tikki doesn't like battling. Marinette leaves the wild Pokémon alone and they give her the same space she gives them.

Marinette isn't a trainer, really. That was another reason not to worry about leaving earlier- Marinette is a designer at heart, and while she still wants to go on a journey she was the only one of her friends who never had a desire to go out and catch more Pokémon. Tikki is enough for her. 

They do make it past the treeline that night, but they don't get very far into the woods before Tikki starts tugging insistently at the bedroll.

"Oh, all right," Marinette relents, looking around for a decent enough spot to set up a bare bones campsite. She's only intending to sleep, at first, but Tikki takes one look at her and makes a scolding noise that startles several nearby Caterpie.

It _is_ getting late, and Marinette's much farther into the woods already than she'd expected to get tonight. If she turns now and makes her way to the edge of the forest rather than even deeper in she won't have to make camp when it's even darker than it already is. The moon provides decent enough illumination for now but she can see the clouds scudding in to cover it already.

If she turns now, she may not have to make camp at all- there should be a Pokécenter even before she makes it to the next town, and all the 'centers offer to let trainers stay overnight. Even if that does tend to mean sleeping on a bench or on the floor it still sounds very warm and inviting from her current position in the middle of a cold forest. There's a bite in the air that suggests snow is coming and while she has plenty of cold-weather gear with her it's still probably the best idea to take shelter with other people for the night. It would definitely be safer.

Marinette's pretty good about going with the smartest thing to do, usually.

But-

Well, she's already put off going on this journey for a lot longer than her friends. She can more than afford to take her time, and she wants to have a bit of an adventure. She made sure she was prepared before she left, so there's no terribly pressing reason that she can't find a place to camp outside for the night.

"Clefairy?" Tikki pipes up at her side, glancing up as Marinette heads deeper into the trees instead of out towards the edge of the forest.

Marinette laughs, her shoulders relaxing a little as Tikki keeps up with her effortlessly. "It's okay, Tikki, I was just thinking how nice it is not to have any deadlines. We can take as much time as we want!" 

"Clefairy," Tikki agrees, speeding up a little bit and then dropping back when Marinette doesn't speed up in turn. 

Marinette smiles down at her. "I know, you're eager to get going. We _are _going, finally, but- " She tilts her head back and looks up at the sky, sighing happily. "But we don't have to rush. And I have you, Tikki, we'll be fine out here as long as we stick together."

Tikki makes a noise of agreement and then dashes ahead again, circling back happily a few minutes later, and Marinette can't stop smiling as her friend explores without ever venturing too far out of sight.

The smart thing to do would still be to push on towards the Pokécenter, as late and as cold as it's getting, but instead Marinette scans around as she walks until she finds a tiny clearing that looks like a perfect place to set down for the night. 

She does have that cold-weather gear and her supplies and all the time in the world, after all. She can sleep wherever she'd like tonight, and it's her and Tikki's first night out on their own journey. If she's honest Marinette's really been looking forward to getting to do some camping out again. She hasn't in a long time now, not since the others had all left much earlier than she and Tikki had.

The two of them clearly aren't the first to camp in this particular clearing. There's an obvious firepit already dug and ringed with rocks, more than enough space to lay out her bedroll beside it, and even a small stack of firewood off to one side.

"Hey, Tikki, over here," Marinette calls, swinging off her backpack and rummaging around. Leaving on her journey so much later than almost all her classmates may mean that Marinette's travelling alone aside from her Pokémon, which she's a little melancholy about still, but it also means that she's much better prepared than they were. Rose, Alix and to a lesser extent Kim have called her so often with updates and stories that Marinette thinks she's heard just about every kind of trouble a new trainer can find, and Nino's rare letters had suggested even more.

Marinette thinks that, anyway, until she goes to sweep a larger pile of leaves aside to find a place for her sleeping roll.

"Wha-" Marinette blinks down at the boy who was, for some reason, hidden _under_ the leaves as he stirs feebly. "Oh, no. Oh no. It hasn't even been a day and I don't know you and you're going to die of hypothermia and I'm going to get arrested for murder and- are you okay? Are you dying? You're _not _dying, right?" she demands, as the stranger starts coughing and sits up slowly, brushing leaves off his clothes.

"Um," he starts, and then sets off into another bout of coughing.

Marinette's eyes widen as this one doesn't seem likely to stop.

Tikki darts over and slams into the boy's back, painfully judging by the wince he responds with, but after another few coughs it does seem to clear his throat. He gives them both a weak smile, though Marinette notices right away that he's oddly careful not to look directly at her. "Um, hi?"

"Hi yourself," Marinette retorts, a little more sharply than she means to as she swings her bedroll to the ground and starts setting up in a hurry. She has several questions already but the most important one is- "Where's all your _gear_?"

"Um," the boy says again, glancing down and rubbing the back of his neck. Marinette sees green eyes flash up at her from under his bangs for a moment, but then he looks down again. 

"Clefairy," Tikki mutters, deprecatingly, and Marinette's eyes narrow.

"You don't _have_ any gear," she says, flatly, and what's visible of his expression tells her all she needs to know. "Tell me you've at least got your Pokémon with you?"

"I have Plagg," he starts, still not looking up. There's something strange about the way he's not looking up, like he's trying not to give her too much of a look _at _him. "Uh, my Gastly, I mean. And we caught a Rattata earlier."

(Marinette tries very hard to ignore the stab of jealousy at that. _She_ hasn't caught any Pokémon yet, she only has Tikki. She's told herself from the start that isn't the point of her journey, and it isn't like she's even been trying to catch any Pokémon, but she's finding herself jealous anyway).

"And Plagg is- where, exactly?" Marinette says, turning just enough to watch the boy out of the corner of her eye while she starts a fire, gathering the nearby wood and sparking a light with the ease of long practice. There's kindling already in the firepit; for being so deep in the woods, this must have been a fairly popular campsite.

It's interesting to see the way he relaxes a little when he thinks she's not looking anymore. "Rattata's in her Pokéball. Plagg is, well, Plagg likes to sneak up on people?" His voice goes a little high and questioning.

Marinette makes a note to watch out for a mischievous Gastly and turns a little more of her attention to the fire, but not enough to miss the way the boy's still relaxing in increments for every time she looks further away from him. "Okay... so you, what, just decided this looked like a good place for a nap?" She shakes her head. "You know there's a 'center like a few hours from here, right? And it's cold out here!" It's right on the verge of snowing again, in fact. Marinette wasn't following any kind of usual timetable anyway, so she'd chosen to leave right after midwinter, when the roads are less busy.

Impassable, sometimes, which is less wise than Marinette usually prides herself on being, but _that's why you bring supplies_.

"You're out here, too," he points out, drawing himself into a more upright position with his back against a tree. "You don't look like _you_ were planning to keep going tonight."

"No," she says dryly, turning just in time to see him duck his head again. That's definitely getting weird. "But the key word in there is _planning_."

"Yeah, well." He rubs at his neck again. "I didn't really... plan to be here at all."

"I can tell." Marinette sighs. "Hey, we're both here now, anyway. Come over by the fire, you've gotta be freezing." She looks at him long enough this time to realise he's not even dressed for the weather. His clothes are stylish, Marinette's a good enough designer to tell that at a glance, and probably expensive- but they aren't _warm_.

He doesn't move. 

"I will drag you over here," Marinette says flatly, after a moment, and though he _still_ won't look at her directly she can just barely make out his eyes widening beneath his bangs. (His hair's messy, too, like he'd run off without bothering to so much as brush it). "I've only been travelling for like half a day, I'm not letting someone die on me the first night I'm out here."

"I wasn't going to-" He starts to protest, but stops at the look Marinette gives him. "It's not _that_ cold."

Her eyebrows go up. "I don't know where you went to school but it is _absolutely_ cold enough to get hypothermia out here. And die."

"Plagg would warn me," he says, but he sounds uncertain. "He'd know."

"It's also going to get much colder. Please just get over here?" Marinette asks, tiredly. She rummages through her backpack again. "I would offer you warmer clothes if we were, like, _remotely_ the same size but at least get over by the fire."

He finally listens to her, uncoiling to his feet in an unexpectedly smooth motion and moving nearer on surprisingly silent feet.

_Don't be barefoot, don't be barefoot,_ Marinette chants in her head, but she looks down almost immediately and- yep. Barefoot.

It's still winter. It's almost certainly going to snow tonight. If it keeps getting colder the way it has been, he's risking frostbite. He might _already _be risking frostbite. 

He... should not be out here like this.

He still seems uncomfortable every time she looks at him, so Marinette scans the treeline as she says, quietly, "So did you run away or something?"

"Or something," he mutters, and then sighs. "No, I don't know why I said that, sorry. I ran away. I know I didn't plan it out real well, okay? I just- There haven't been a lot of chances to _go_." His voice turns a little bitter as he adds, "If Plagg couldn't go through walls, there wouldn't have been _any_."

Marinette takes a deep breath. Then another.

She thinks he's her age, and that's telling enough. Marinette is already older than all her friends were when they left. Most parents encourage their children to go on their journeys, to go out and make new friends and learn new things. Even her own parents had worried about her putting it off for so long. 

She hasn't given him her name because she's been more concerned that she wasn't sure he was going to make it through the night, left to his own devices. She thinks he was more _unconscious _than _asleep _and it really is much colder than he's dressed for. His Gastly still hasn't appeared and a Rattata's not much of a defence for a single person even out of their Pokéball.

She doesn't know why he hasn't given her _his_ name, but she's definitely forming some suspicions.

"I'm Marinette," she says, finally. "I'm out here this late because I _planned_ to be." She can't quite keep herself from emphasizing the word _planned_. "I didn't really want to leave home back when my friends did, so," she gestures vaguely. "So it's not like there was anything stopping me from leaving at whatever time I wanted to."

She regrets that, a little, when he flinches even as he finally takes a seat beside her and closer to the fire.

Marinette picks up a branch and stirs the fire, staring into it intently.

He doesn't introduce himself. 

He actually doesn't say anything, and when she finally glances over again she's alarmed to see he looks like he's drowsing off again.

"Hey," Marinette says, sharply. "Hey, snap out of it. If you fall asleep right now you're gonna risk not waking back _up_." He's by the fire, at least, but- his clothes are _not _for this weather, his shoes are non-existent, and she's just now realising that if he's this badly prepared there's definitely no way he brought any food out here with him.

It _really_ must have been his only chance to get away.

When he still doesn't reply, she reaches over to take his shoulder and shake him lightly. 

His head snaps up, and her heart stops for a moment when he looks at her full-on for the first time. He's pretty, even with the dark circles under his eyes and the dirt smudged across his nose, but that's not why her breath catches.

"Oh, shit," he breathes, trying to scramble to his feet. He stumbles, though, and Marinette's lunge is enough to bring them both down in a tangle of limbs, dangerously close to the fire.

"Shit, shit, shit," he chants- _Adrien Agreste_ chants- as Marinette grapples with him, trying to get them both further away from the fire pit.

"Calm down!" she says, half-shouting. "It's all right, okay, we're in the middle of the woods and it's the middle of the night who _would I even tell_-"

Because that's why he's out here. That _has _to be why he's out here, why he's been trying so hard not to let her see his face. Adrien Agreste is famous, the face of his father's fashion business, and he is _definitely _not supposed to be out here.

But he'd be recognised at a Pokécenter, she realises that immediately. He wasn't just being evasive before, he really _can't_ go. His father's protectiveness is legendary. The man's symbol is literally an Articuno. (It is now, anyway. Marinette's done enough research for her own designs to uncover the long-forgotten, much more humble Venomoth the Agreste brand had started with).

"I'm _not_-" Marinette starts, gasping as he gets an elbow in her stomach and stumbles upright again. She hauls herself upright, too, racing after him. "I'm really not going to tell anyone, but it's too cold to be _out _here in that!"

Just before she can catch up to him something slams into her from the slide.

_Gastly_, she registers, dazed, as the elusive ghost Pokémon makes a deep growling noise at her and darts after his trainer. _Plagg_, _Adrien called him Plagg._

"Clefairy!" Tikki cries, rushing to her own trainer's side, as Marinette grabs onto a tree for balance and presses one hand to her side with a wince. 

"I'm okay," Marinette assures her Clefairy, glancing up.

And then she blinks, a little bit disbelieving, when she sees that Adrien's Gastly is doing his best to drag him back _towards _them.

"Plagg," he hisses, digging in his heels to absolutely no effect. That's impressive considering Gastlys are, well, mostly _gas_. And Plagg had managed to slam into her, too. 

Adrien's Gastly actually rolls his eyes, which is... something Marinette didn't expect to see. 

"Plagg what are you _doing-_" Adrien hisses, trying to step back again and nearly falling.

"Adrien?" Marinette says, hesitantly, and regrets it when he flinches. 

She steps away from her tree, holding up her hands. "Seriously, even if I wanted to tell anyone _which I don't_, we are currently in the middle of the woods. At night. There is literally no one to tell."

The wary look he gives her is more haunting than his ghost Pokémon is.

Tikki abruptly bounds over to him, circles behind him, and starts shoving. Between that and Plagg continuing to pull him forward, everyone ends up back at the fire in no time. 

Adrien tries to get up again and Plagg bats him back down immediately, making Marinette muffle a snicker, but after that he does stay sitting at the fire even when she joins him.

None of them say anything, for a while. Marinette gets up long enough to fish out her tarp for them to sit on and to fetch both her first-aid kit and her bedroll, but she sits back down with the bedroll rather than actually set it up.

(Largely because he really _isn't_ dressed warmly, and she may really need to be using her first-aid kit right now, and she doesn't know how not to be awkward about what she needs to ask).

"Guess you know now why I didn't go into town," Adrien says, finally. Plagg's hovering at his side and the Gastly makes a low noise at that.

Marinette makes an affirmative one back. "Ah, yeah. I get that now."

There's another awkward silence.

"You really didn't have a chance to bring _anything_ with?" Marinette ventures at last, finally shuffling around to set down her kit and unroll her bedding.

Adrien pulls his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around them, staring at the fire. From this angle Marinette can tell that his feet are scratched and bloody already. They don't look discoloured, at least, which is something she'd been afraid of. It doesn't take _that_ long to get frostbite and she doesn't know how long he's been out here, but getting him warm is probably the most important thing, then. "I have Plagg."

"Yeah..." Marinette frowns. "Wait, I thought you had a Butterfree."

Adrien snorts. There's a tired sort of humour in it as he says, "Yeah, well, I don't. But ghost Pokémon-" He gestures, vaguely. "Plagg is a little less than photogenic."

Plagg makes a chuffing noise that's very definitely laughter and ducks under Adrien's arm, pressing as close as a mostly-gaseous Pokémon possibly can and closer than a poisonous one probably should.

"I think he suits you," Marinette says, smiling, as Tikki does the same thing on her other side. 

Adrien turns enough to give her an exhausted smile. "Really?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, he clearly cares about you. That's what's important, right?" Marinette smooths out her bedroll, inhales, and then turns to Tikki. Her Clefairy understands immediately and rushes to help wrap it around all of them. 

Adrien flinches a little as it settles, but he doesn't try to get up and run off again. That's all she really needs at this point. 

Marinette's not sure his Gastly's going to be happy with him if he leaves the fire, anyway.

"Ah, sorry," she apologises, a little bit delayed. "Just- seriously, you're going to get frostbite. If you haven't already." She looks down at his feet again and frowns. "It doesn't _look _like you do, at least, but it doesn't take long- I don't have shoes your size, uh, I mean, obviously I don't, but I have- I have some supplies? And I, uh." She stumbles to a halt, rubbing at her forehead with a groan. "Socks. Socks is what I'm trying to say. I'm sorry, I'm used to talking to just Tikki."

Adrien muffles a laugh for about half a second, then stops. "It's okay. I'm used to talking to just Plagg, honestly."

"Oh, good, so I won't sound completely nuts." Marinette nudges him gently with her shoulder as she shifts over and Plagg phases out from their cover long enough to help Tikki drag the heavy bedroll closer around them both.

Adrien flinches again but this time he leans into her a moment later, starting to shiver. (That he _hadn't_ been shivering before registers with her with a shock of alarm. She doesn't know how long he's been out here, but now she thinks the reason Plagg wasn't with Adrien when Marinette found him was because the Gastly must have gone for help).

Marinette drags her rucksack closer to herself, leaning into Adrien in turn as Plagg phases back under the bedroll and Tikki ducks in from Marinette's side. "I'm seriously not going to tell anyone, I swear." She finds what she's looking for, drags several shapeless sheets of fabric out from the bottom of her pack and holds them up as she hums consideringly. She only has very basic sewing supplies at the moment- she'd had to prioritise what she'd packed, and it isn't as though she can't buy more when she passes through a town- but she should have enough. "Here, uh, just, use one of these as a blanket? Since we're already _under _the blanket, and all."

"Ah, thanks," Adrien says, hesitantly, as he takes the fabric and wraps it around himself, tucking his feet under it with an audible sigh of relief. Marinette's starting to worry more and more seriously about frostbite, even though it looks like cuts and scratches are his bigger problem. The forest isn't a good place to be barefoot without growing up used to it. "You... _really _don't plan on telling anyone?"

Marinette takes a minute to wrap herself in one of her scraps, too, since the bedroll's really only meant for one person. "I mean, we _are_ still in the middle of the woods, so even if I wanted to..." She trails off and waves a hand around, encompassing the trees surrounding them. "But no, I don't. Not if you were that eager to take off with _no supplies_."

"You aren't gonna let that go, huh." He shuffles like he wants to rest one arm on Plagg, but Gastlys aren't exactly the cuddly kind of Pokémon. 

To Marinette's surprise Tikki gets up and moves to Adrien's side, nudging herself under his arm.

"Huh." Marinette blinks. "That's weird, she's usually really shy."

"So's Plagg, but-" Now Adrien gestures around vaguely. "Doesn't seem to want me to leave."

"Yeah, I think that's different," Marinette says, flatly. "Even ghost Pokémon don't tend to prefer _dead_ _trainers_."

"For the last time, I was not dying." He makes a face.

For a second, though, it looks more pained than she thinks he means it to, and it occurs to Marinette much later than it should have that she should try and make sure he doesn't have frostbite anywhere _else_. She's _still _not sure he isn't dangerously hypothermic, but that he's awake and coherent are both very good signs.

"Of course you weren't." Marinette sets the excess fabric aside for a moment, pulling the thermos and a wrapped sandwich from her backpack's side pocket instead. He really couldn't have been yet, or he wouldn't be alert and talking to her already, but that _yet_ is frightening. "You know once you stop shivering you're in serious trouble, right?"

He doesn't move to take the thermos.

She pushes it into his hands. "It's hot chocolate, you definitely need it more than I do right now."

"...it's yours," he says, blinking at her.

She rolls her eyes and hears his Gastly make that chuffing laugh noise again. "I'm not the one who's _hypothermic_. Drink it already. Slowly."

"You..." He stares down at the thermos for a second, but he does take a drink. "You, uh, you know about hypothermia?"

"Some of us didn't come out here without any kind of medical training," Marinette says, dryly.

His eyes flick to her, then back to the thermos. It's only when his shoulders start to hunch again that Marinette realises that, if he was this determined to take off on his own, that's probably not something he could have helped.

"Sorry," she says, quietly. "I shouldn't have said that. Uh, you should stay awake, too, just in case. Here-" She digs out one of her heavy woollen socks and hands it to him, along with extra fabric and her spare sewing kit. "Think you can give me a hand with this?"

There's a little more life in this smile than the previous ones. "I can try?"

He's not very good at it. At first Marinette is genuinely alarmed that he's having trouble with coordination, but then he ruefully shows her his attempt to sew a larger sock from their dwindling supplies and she realises with some amusement that he's just that bad at sewing. He does start showing noticeable improvement after only a few hours at the most, though, and he begins, cautiously, to talk a little more as he does.

He still doesn't explain why he's running away in the middle of winter, but he wants to know about her. Nothing that Marinette could tell him is a secret so she doesn't mind answering.

"A lot of my classmates left a year or two back, and I still wanted to wait," she says, gently swatting his hand away when he tries to sneak some of her green thread. Marinette doesn't actually need to use the green thread, but neither does he, and it's a matter of principle at this point. "That's not that uncommon where I'm from. I mean, I have one friend I probably would have gone with, but he left earlier than the others."

"Why didn't you go with him?" Adrien drops the sock he's working on, not for the first time, and Marinette sets down her project to hand it back to him with a worried glance. 

"Are you _sure_ we're warm enough? I don't have a tent or another sleeping bag, but a lean-to might be warmer." Marinette's still more than a little concerned about how long he'd been out here but she doesn't know that there's anything else she can do.

"I'm okay," Adrien says, but softly, and Marinette shuffles them both a little closer to the fire.

"I didn't go with him 'cause he didn't tell me he was going, mostly." Marinette picks her fabric back up, carefully, and starts working on it again. "I mean I had other reasons to stay but if he'd asked me I would have wanted to go together. Tikki is amazing but it would be nice not to be the only human."

Adrien starts to say something else and stops.

Marinette feels like she can make a few good guesses at what it would have been, though.

They end up staying up all night. They end up with ridiculous mismatched socks for both of them, because after they've cobbled together a pair for him Marinette still doesn't think he should fall asleep (he's finally moved close enough that they're keeping each other warm, but he's still so cold). He ends up trying to make another pair for her, too, but they're very badly made.

(Marinette has every intention of wearing them anyway but they are almost _impressively_ bad).

False dawn is lighting the forest around them when Marinette says, triumphantly, "Here, this should help." She shakes out her night's project. "I, uh, would have tried for a jacket but-"

"Not a lot of time," Adrien says, laughing just as quietly as before. "Limited supplies."

"I can't _believe_ you stole my thread to add paw print patterns. To our _socks_. _Bad_ paw print patterns." His grin starts to falter, but only until she nudges him with her shoulder and nods at her own project. "But thanks for the idea."

Marinette had only had a few colours with her, because she'd been planning to pick up more supplies at the next town and she'd prioritized her survival kit first. As a result the hooded cloak isn't as heavy a material as she'd like, and it's going to be way too short on him, but it's better than nothing.

And picking out the paw prints on the hem in the same electric green thread he'd taken a liking to had been fun, too, even if it had been a little time consuming and not at all necessary.

"Not up to your usual standards, I know," Marinette teases, shaking out the cloak and laying it between them. "But it'll make it harder to recognise you."

Adrien's staring down at the cloak. He reaches out to run his thumb over it, almost compulsively, like it's going to disappear when he looks away. "I think you just raised my standards, actually."

"O-oh." Marinette finds herself wishing she didn't blush quite so easily. "Well, uh, can I- can I ask you something?"

"I... yeah, of course." Adrien rubs the back of his neck and looks back at her sheepishly. "I mean... you kind of saved my life? And I don't really have any way to repay you."

"Well-" Marinette hesitates, but then hurries to complete her question when she sees his face start to shutter. "W-wait, I don't want- listen, just, do you want to travel together?"

"What?" Adrien sounds a lot more startled than she thinks her question warrants.

"It's just," Marinette begins, sheepishly. "Well, a lot of my friends went on their journeys in groups. And that always sounded like fun, you know? But I waited so long, there was no one to go with." She shrugs. "Everyone else already left so I assumed I'd really have to travel with just Tikki."

"I'd... love to." He drops his gaze and rubs at the back of his neck. "But I don't know if that's fair to you. I mean, I can't, I can't actually go into towns? And I don't, you know, really know what I'm doing."

"So _I_ go into town," Marinette suggests, warming to the idea more by the second. "Just for supplies and stuff, I don't mind camping out at night. That way we can both go and you don't get recognised. Or, you know, _die of hypothermia_."

He flushes at that.

"Think about it, at least?" Marinette says gently. "I think it'd be more fun for both of us to travel with a friend."

Adrien's breath catches. "A friend?"

Marinette glances down at the cloak and socks, idly picking up her own pair and tossing them from hand to hand. "I mean, yeah. If you want to be. I think this probably makes us friends."

"If I _want_ to-" The smile he gives her is blinding. "Of course I want to be. I've never- I've never actually _had _a friend before. I mean, except for Plagg."

"Gastly," Plagg grumbles, and Tikki makes a noise like she's scolding him.

Marinette and Adrien both laugh.

"So you'll come with me?" Marinette asks, when they've both stopped again.

"If _you'll_ come with _me_, then yes," Adrien returns, a smile still lighting up his face.

"Then put your cloak on and help me pack up, I need to go find you actual _shoes_," Marinette says with another laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> points to the first person who catches _why_ plagg and tikki are these pokémon specifically


	2. come with me, the time is right

Marinette's bulky, badly made socks barely fit when she tries to pull her shoes on over them. Adrien's, though, keep his feet from getting even more cut up, even if he is still wincing every few steps. They probably need to find somewhere else to camp for a few nights so that he can heal up more.

The cloak _ is _comically short on him but he clearly doesn't mind- he pulls it on and clasps it closed immediately.

Yanking the hood over his head, Adrien grins at her, his eyes seeming even brighter in the shadows cast by the cloth. "Are we going now?"

Marinette shrugs, rising to her feet and offering him a hand up as well. "I mean, it's a ways yet and we're both awake, we might as well." She makes a face. "Tonight, though, we are finding someplace warm and dry to sleep. I am not a fan of staying up in the cold all night."

Adrien looks a little bit abashed, but it doesn't actually dim his sunny smile. Marinette can't help noticing that it looks a lot different than any of his photos ever have and she finds herself wondering if any of those smiles had ever been real.

It _ is _more fun to travel with him. They're still not very good at conversation, either of them, but it's different to have someone besides Tikki to talk to. Their Pokémon are enjoying themselves, at least, chasing each other in irregular circles around Adrien and Marinette's route. Occasionally Plagg will dart through something solid and elicit an indignant chirp from Tikki.

"We could try playing twenty questions, I guess?" Marinette suggests after another half an hour of awkward attempts at conversation. She hadn't realised she was quite so out of practice at talking to other humans, but at least it probably makes things less awkward for Adrien. Marinette _ has _ talked to plenty of people before. It's just been a few years since she spoke with very many people outside of her family. She's not sure Adrien's talked to _ anyone _ outside of his immediate family at this point- he definitely doesn't seem to know how to carry a conversation.

"Of course! How do you play?" he asks, sounding both nervous and eager. "I mean, I'd love to, but I don't know how."

Marinette blinks, but he's ahead of her and doesn't see her expression. "Adrien, don't agree to things without knowing what they are!"

He turns back to her, tilting his head. "But I trust you."

"You just met me," she points out, catching up. "Don't do that."

"What, trust you?" Adrien says as Plagg circles back to them. He tugs his cloak further around himself and gives her another of those blinding smiles. "You kind of made it hard not to."

"Right," Marinette says, finding that her voice has gone a little squeaky at the sight of that smile. "Anyway! Twenty questions. Um, I think of something, you get twenty questions to guess what it is. Or you think of something and I get twenty questions, actually, yeah, you should probably go first. To learn how to play." She's both out of breath and red when she finishes. Hopefully it's not as noticeable as she thinks it is.

Adrien doesn't react, anyway, but then he might not. He tilts his head again (which is unfairly cute, now that she's paying attention) and hums briefly before lighting up. "Okay, I thought of something!"

Marinette eyes him and almost says, "Is it Plagg?" before realising that's definitely not the way to teach him how to play, even if she's suddenly sure that's what he's thinking. "Okay. Pokémon, vegetable or mineral?"

"So it's not just yes or no questions?" he asks her curiously, ducking under a tree branch. "Oh, uh, Pokémon."

"Kinda depends on who you play with, actually," Marinette admits, following him. She's short enough not to have to worry about ducking. As often as she wishes she were at least a _ bit _ taller, it's turned out to be very convenient for travelling through the woods. "I always thought it was more boring if you stick to yes or no questions, but I've heard people insist on the opposite, too. There are different versions."

"Are there a lot of games like that?" Adrien stops, coming to a thicket that's blocking their way. Marinette moves up beside him to study it.

Plagg darts through and grins at her from the other side.

"Yeah," she says absently, trying to decide if it would be easier to go around. "I know some card and dice games with a few different sets of rules. I didn't bring any cards or dice with me, but I can get some in town. They're good to have, anyway. Um- is it a grass type?" 

"No," Adrien says, stopping beside her and glancing between her and the thicket. "Can we get through here?"

Marinette sighs. "We can, but going around is probably easier." Plus he still doesn't have shoes. She doesn't particularly want to try and get through any brush they don't have to when his only footwear is lumpy socks, and it isn't as though they're in any real hurry.

They're still relatively close to the Agreste mansion, though, now that she thinks about it. She doesn't know how long ago he left or how quickly anyone is likely to come looking, but it's possible they _ should _ be in a hurry. 

A few more questions- and a few more detours- and Marinette's confident enough that Adrien's familiar with the game to ask, "Is it Plagg?"

He gives her a sideways grin. "No."

She narrows her eyes at him. "Are you lying?"

"Is that allowed?" he teases, before shaking his head. "No, it's really not Plagg."

"Rattata?" she asks, recalling that's his only other Pokémon, but he shakes his head again. 

Marinette scans the area around them, sighs, and then says, "Is it a fairy type?"

"Uh-" He looks slightly guilty, and she catches him glancing at Tikki. "Yes."

"Is it Tikki?" Marinette asks, raising an eyebrow. She hadn't expected him to do that. 

"Yeah," Adrien admits, laughing a little. "Your turn?"

"Maybe not, you just ruined my plan to go with Plagg," she says, amused. "And anyway, we should take a break."

"We haven't been walking that long," Adrien protests, although he does stop walking.

"No, we haven't," Marinette agrees. "But you're slowing down. _ And _you're limping. Sit down."

"I'm fine, I can keep going," Adrien protests.

"You're _ not_, sit down." Marinette gestures at a mostly-flat rock nearby, and when Adrien only looks at her with a stubborn expression she fights the urge to push him down onto the rock just so that he'll get off his feet. "We'll get going again as soon as you don't look so hurt. We're not in a hurry, right?"

"It's not that bad," he tries, even as Marinette sprays a potion over his bleeding feet and raises an eyebrow at him when he hisses in pain. "It's not!"

"We're still waiting a while before you try walking on those again," Marinette says, dryly.

He draws his knees up to his chest, perching comfortably on the rock they've found. "Okay, I guess. Um. What do we- do, though?"

There's not enough room on the rock to join him, so Marinette sits down and leans her back up against it as she says, "Talk more, usually. That's what people generally do."

"It is?" Adrien says, quietly, and Marinette finds herself continuing to revise a lot of assumptions she'd had previously. Adrien Agreste is famous. His face is in magazines, on billboards, on posters on her wall. He's smiling in almost every single one, but-

The shy smiles and sunny grins she's been seeing from him out here are a far cry from the model son's expressions. Marinette thinks every last picture of him she sees is going to look lackluster and dull now, after seeing the way all of Adrien lights up when he's happy.

Adrien's famous, all right. Apparently he's also been miserable. He doesn't look happy like that in _ any _ photo she can think of, and although she doesn't plan to ever tell him about it she has more than one magazine full of his pictures to compare the two.

"How about a different game? Two truths and a lie," Marinette says abruptly. "It's, uh, kind of more for people who know each other already? But we can play anyway. It's exactly what it sounds like," she adds, on the sudden thought that he's probably not familiar with this game either. Gabriel Agreste is infamous for never letting his son off his property, to the point where that's where all his photoshoots have taken place. 

Marinette's also clearly never thought too hard about the _ letting _ his son leave part of that. It's obvious enough that Adrien _ wanted _ to.

"I think you might have me at a disadvantage," Adrien points out, drawing his cloak closer around himself. He tilts his head into the hood with a sigh that wakes an answering pain in Marinette's chest. "I mean, a lot about me is public knowledge, right?"

"I thought you had a Butterfree," Marinette points out. "So, probably less than you'd think." He's not actually anything like she'd have expected, but she doesn't know him well enough yet to know whether it's a good idea to say that or not. "We don't have to play, though, we could do something else. Or we could just talk, there's no reason we can't do that."

Adrien is silent for a long moment.

Then, very quietly, he says, "I'm not actually sure I know _ how _ to have a conversation. There's- I meant it, when I said I've mostly talked to Plagg."

"Gastly," Plagg mutters, circling closer to the rock and then settling down in front of it, beside Marinette. Tikki peers around her for a moment, but then sits back with apparent satisfaction at seeing Plagg.

"Tikki gets jealous of other Pokémon pretty easily, and all my friends left years ago," Marinette admits. "So I'm pretty out of practice with conversations, myself."

"Okay," Adrien says, finally. "My favourite colour is blue, my Rattata is the only Pokémon I've actually caught, and uh." He stops. He starts to say something else, then stops again, looking frustrated.

Marinette _ is _ involved enough in fashion to know quite a bit about Adrien already, considering how well known he is. He wasn't wrong about that. She knows that he's an only child, that the Pokémon he _ supposedly _ has is a Butterfree, that his mother disappeared under mysterious circumstances years ago, that his favourite colour according to multiple magazine interviews is periwinkle blue. He's a famous _ model _ and Marinette designs clothes; she probably still knows his measurements. She definitely knows what he means when he says she has him at a disadvantage.

But.

It isn't true that he has a Butterfree. It doesn't seem likely that it was ever true.

And she's sure he's already given her his lie.

"It's all right," Marinette says, leaning back against the rock and looking up at him. His feet still look bad, but they do seem better than they were. "Blue's not really your favourite colour, is it?"

He blinks down at her, tilting his head. "It's really not. How'd you know?"

Marinette raises her eyebrows. "I actually do have blue thread, it was right where you could see it, and you kept trying to snatch the _ green _ thread out of my hands instead."

"Ah." He rubs the back of his neck, a little sheepishly. "Ah, sorry? I didn't mean to, uh, be- be annoying."

"What?" Marinette says, startled. "Adrien, I was having fun. I thought you were, too."

He relaxes so immediately that she realises for the first time how tense he'd actually been. "I was! I was, I just, don't want to be... uh.... it was really nice of you to invite me along, Marinette."

"Can't risk you dying of hypothermia," she points out, dryly. "I can't _ believe _ you ran off with _ nothing_."

"Only had a couple minute window to get out, and I didn't know when it would be," he says, quietly. "And I couldn't pack anything beforehand. Someone would have noticed."

Marinette makes a face, even as she climbs back to her feet. The sun is mostly up by now and the potion should have had enough effect for them to get moving again. "You are starting to make me wish we could get away with wearing masks into town, honestly."

He laughs and accepts her hand up, but he also says, a little shyly, "We?"

Marinette shrugs, uncertainly. "I mean, we're friends now, right? We should stick together."

"I think wearing masks together is a little more solidarity than usual," he teases, but he looks really happy.

The town is about as far away as Marinette estimated but it takes much longer to get there when she's trying to set a slower pace to spare Adrien's injured feet.

He's so obviously trying not to slow her down. Marinette is trying not to move too fast herself, but Tikki and Plagg keep darting ahead and circling back, and it always makes her nervous when Tikki is too far out of her sight.

Adrien might be feeling the same way about Plagg, judging by the way his eyes track after his Gastly.

"How _ did _you meet Plagg, anyway? You said you only ever caught your Rattata," Marinette says, curiously, even as she turns to offer him a hand up onto a rock outcropping. It hadn't taken her more than a few moment's thought to realise they should stay off the main paths, and Adrien hasn't questioned the direction they'd taken- she doesn't know if he even realises that they aren't anywhere near any major routes anymore. It's not like he has a map. 

(He was absolutely going to get lost and die out here. Marinette doesn't like that thought).

That does unfortunately mean that they've ended up on a path that's not much better than a wild Pokémon trail. Marinette doesn't mind that at all but she thinks she's going to have to convince Adrien to sit and rest his feet again before they reach town.

"It was more like he met me, I think," Adrien says, accepting her help up and rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly when she lets go of his hand. "There's not a lot of privacy at home and I found a way into the attic years ago. I used to, well, I used to hide up there..." He trails off briefly, shaking his head. "Anyway, one night I was up there and Plagg came through the wall. Scared the _ hell _ out of me." Adrien smiles fondly, remembering.

Marinette looks ahead of them to where Plagg is already circling back again, Tikki jumping happily along beside him. "He seems really attached."

"Yeah, he is." Adrien relaxes more the longer they talk about his Pokémon. "Father spent ages trying to get him to go away, actually, but Plagg wouldn't leave. Or he would, sometimes, but he'd just sneak back in by the next night at the latest."

Marinette snickers. "And Plagg can go through walls. Oh_, that _ must have exasperated your dad."

Plagg's back now, and he hovers over Adrien's shoulder with that same chuffing laugh even as Tikki hurries to Marinette's side. Adrien reaches up and trails one hand through his Gastly's misty aura.

Marinette tilts her head, interested. "Hey, his poison doesn't affect you."

"You build up a tolerance, turns out." Adrien shrugs and lets his hand drop back down. "Especially if your Gastly keeps sneaking into your room all the time."

"So I'm guessing your dad _ doesn't _ have that tolerance?" Marinette asks, finding herself very amused at the thought. Her Clefairy is considered unusually protective but it seems like Adrien's Gastly might just be the same way.

Adrien laughs. "No, not at all. He's never liked Plagg, and it's very much mutual, so they haven't been around each other enough to have any tolerance." He blinks. "Hey, come to think of it, _ you _ weren't bothered by Plagg at all last night. Are you used to poison Pokémon, too?"

"Yeah, Papa has a Nidorina," Marinette says easily. "In fact his Nidorina and Maman's Nidorino have been around my whole life, and we think I was born better able to deal with it? It's hard to tell. I mean, they're careful, but-" She nods at Plagg. "I'm guessing you already know how easily accidents happen. After the first scare my parents decided it was best to be _ sure _ I wouldn't be too badly affected by poison so we worked on building up a resistance."

"I'm glad," he says, and he sounds it. "I was worried, with Plagg staying so close last night. And accidents can happen a lot easier with poison _ gas_."

"Hadn't thought of that," Marinette admits. "I'll bet they do. Seriously, though, _ don't _ worry. Once I was a little older I kept working on it myself, because I thought it would be helpful if I ever caught a poison type of my own."

"You know," Adrien says, thoughtfully. "Technically I didn't? Plagg doesn't have a Pokéball or anything, I never actually _ caught _him. He just refused to leave."

Marinette laughs, startled. "That's so weird, I didn't catch Tikki either! I don't even own any Pokéballs yet. It sounds like it was kind of like what happened with you and Plagg? There, uh, there was this cave I used to play in with some classmates, even though we really weren't supposed to, and I went too far in on a dare one day and got lost. I didn't think it was for very long but later they told me it was two days!"

"Oh, wow." Adrien hops over a small stream, winces when he lands, and turns to offer her a hand. "Your parents must have been so freaked out."

Marinette shrugs as she takes his hand, though she does glance at his feet with concern. The socks seem to be holding up, though. "Yes and no, I guess? I know they were concerned, but they knew where we were playing originally, and Kim's disappeared for a lot longer than that before so no one had gotten to the point of forming a search party yet before I ran into Tikki." She drops her hand down to the Clefairy at her side, earning herself a happy trill. "She led me right back out of the caves. I wasn't even that far from an entrance. I thought she'd just go right back after, Clefairy usually do if you're lucky enough to see them at all, but-" She grins at him. "Well, she didn't have to sneak in, but she wouldn't leave either. It's like she thinks I'll get myself right back into trouble without her."

"So we both have overprotective Pokémon," Adrien teases, and then hesitates. His curiosity clearly gets the better of him as he asks, "You said you weren't supposed to play in the cave, but they knew that's where you went?"

Marinette laughs again. "I'm from a really small village right near Mt. Moon. It's a whole thing there, almost a rite of passage, I guess? No one is _ supposed _ to go playing in the mountain but everyone does it. All our parents did it before us, and I think they'd be secretly disappointed if we didn't do it, too. And it's good luck to go and see a Clefairy, or even a Clefable, although I don't know that anyone ever _ has _ seen a Clefable. I mean Kim swears he did but he's _ probably _ making that up."

"Kim?" Adrien asks, ducking under a branch Marinette hadn't even noticed and holding it aside for her. "You mentioned him before."

"We went to school together," Marinette says without thinking about it, and she's glad he's behind her now so that he can't see her wince a moment later. That he's homeschooled _ is _ common knowledge and considering how willing he'd been to follow her, and the way he'd reacted to the mention of friends, she doubts that was something he'd _ wanted _.

Marinette tries to sound casual instead of like she'd stalled out for a second as she adds, "Along with our friends Alix and Rose and Nino. Kim and Alix were the ones who were really terrible about dares, though, they were always getting the rest of us in trouble." 

She makes no attempt to keep the fondness from creeping into her voice. Her friend's calls have become rarer as they scattered across the world, and she thinks Kim and Alix might actually have found their way out of Kanto entirely by now the way Nino did before them, but no matter how they drift apart she's quite sure they'll still always count each other as friends.

She and Adrien have to stop talking for the next few minutes, because they've hit a rough enough patch of ground that both of them need each other's help to scramble over it. It's easy, Marinette finds, to put her trust in Adrien enough to let him help pull her across tricky terrain, to want to help him in turn. It already feels like she's known him forever.

She thinks a little guiltily of the fashion magazines and posters in her childhood bedroom, but that isn't knowing someone. Spending a night huddled under a single blanket with their Pokémon, fighting off hypothermia and trying to create with limited supplies, is something else entirely.

"You know, that story about Tikki finding you makes me think you're maybe a little more serious about dares yourself than you're admitting," Adrien says with a grin when they're back on more solid terrain, just before he steps too hard on an uneven patch of ground and hisses in pain. 

Misshapen socks thrown hastily together when they were both half awake are definitely not adequate footwear, but Marinette thinks they must be close to town now.

"Adrien, sit down," she says, exasperated. "I bet I can get into town and back fairly quick from here. Why don't you wait here and I'll be right back with," she narrows her eyes at him, "Actual _ supplies_."

He doesn't rise to her teasing this time. In fact, his eyes flash brightly and warily at her through his bangs as he glances over at her instead, and Marinette's breath catches for more than one reason.

For one thing, looking like that at all should be _ illegal_. That's not the fashion model, boy-next-door magazine image, that's a boy who's laughed and talked and spent all night huddled under her blanket with her looking at her like he doesn't want to _ lose _her.

Like he thinks she's not going to come back.

It's true, she remembers suddenly, that his mother vanished one day. That's a matter of public record.

It's very possible he _ does _ think she's not going to come back.

Marinette has every intention of coming right back, but Adrien has no way to know that. No matter how much she feels like she's known him forever they did only meet last night. 

She's not sure how to get him to believe she's not leaving.

"Adrien," she says, and he does look at her again. "Adrien, I'll be right back. I swear I'll be right back."

"Sure," he says. Unconvincingly. "I'll just, uh. Wait here."

Marinette hesitates, but there's not a lot she can _ do_. She can hardly leave her pack with him, not when she's going to need it for any supplies she buys, and Tikki is her only Pokémon- and Tikki has hardly left her side in years.

The night before was the most she's seen Tikki interact with someone else in years. 

Tikki is oddly choosy, even for a Clefairy. She'd only seemed to like spending time around one of Marinette's friends from home, and Nino had left a year before the others; Marinette hasn't actually seen Tikki cuddle up to _ anyone _ else the way she had Adrien.

Marinette makes herself walk away, but she's not even out of sight when she turns to her Clefairy and asks, quietly, "Hey, Tikki, would you be willing to stay with him while I'm in town? I won't be long."

Tikki looks between her and Adrien for a few long moments. When she looks back at Marinette something in her eyes sparks.

And then she turns and heads back towards Adrien.

He hasn't moved, but when the Clefairy jumps up next to him he lifts his head in obvious surprise. 

"She decided to wait with you," Marinette calls back, waving, and she sees him start to smile again before she turns to keep going.

She doesn't notice then that she doesn't see Plagg anywhere.

They're probably too close to town, really, she decides as she hops over a uselessly low fence and onto a side street. They'll have to camp farther away, just to be safe.

Marinette does her shopping much faster than usual. She wants to get away from towns as much as they can- if no one is looking for Adrien yet then it won't be long before they start- so she's trying her hardest to consolidate everything she needs into only a few visits. 

That would be easier if she didn't always have such a pressing _ need _ for sewing supplies and fabric, she thinks wryly as she makes for her last store.

She actually does have a need this time, though. Adrien has nothing. Marinette should be able to _ do _something about that. 

She's going to be nearly out of ready cash by the end of this single trip, but the memory of Adrien struggling not to slow her down while walking on scratched and bloody feet overrides her concerns about money. Her parents taught her more than enough survival skills that they'll be able to go a long while without going into any towns at all, anyway. 

Which is good, because they're going to have to. 

"Hey, I need to know if you've got any-" Marinette starts as she's only halfway through the door into the last shop, in much more of a hurry than she'd usually be, when she sees something that brings her up short.

"_ Nino _?" she says, floored, as her childhood friend stares at her from over the counter with eyes as wide as saucers.

"Marinette?" he says, sounding just as lost. 

He's on the wrong _ side _ of the counter, she realises slowly. 

Not for long, though, because a moment later his eyes narrow again. Nino rips off the apron he's wearing, throws it aside, and then throws _ himself _ over the counter and lands near her.

"_Get me out of here_," he hisses, grabbing her elbow with enough force to make her wince, which is _ not _ like Nino at all.

"What?" Marinette says, still confused. "Nino, I thought you were in the Seafoam Islands! You've- you've been sending me _ letters_!"

"I lied," he says, tugging her towards the door. "I lied, okay, I need your help but we need to _ go _-"

Marinette has known Nino since they were four. 

She's _ never _seen him act like this. 

She's also never seen him without any Pokémon, so she doesn't hesitate to follow him out into the street, although immediately after that she rolls her eyes and reverses their grip on each other so that _ she's _ towing _ him _ along. She wishes she could have warned Adrien, because judging by the way he tried to run from _ her _ he's going to be very alarmed when she shows back up with another person, but this is _Nino_. She trusts Nino- and he's in trouble. Nino doesn't _ act _ like this, and he isn't supposed to _ be _ here.

"Wait," Nino says, digging his heels in, much more obstinate suddenly than she remembers. "Wait, we can't leave yet."

"You're the one who said we need to go!" Marinette exclaims, beyond exasperated now. She thought she'd be going on her journey with Tikki alone, not with _ two _stubborn boys, but it looks like that's shaping up to be what's happening with or without her input. "Will you make up your mind?"

"We do need to go," Nino insists, but he looks more like the slightly shy and nervous boy she remembers now. The lack of hat and headphones is throwing her off a little. "We definitely need to go, but they- Marinette, they _ have Wayzz_, all right? I've gotta- I've gotta get my Pokémon back."

"Nino," Marinette says, slowly, letting go of him and folding her arms. She levels a gaze at him that never failed to make him confess everything when they were children. "Explain. Now."

Nino has absolutely not been in the Seafoam Islands for the last few years. Nino has, it turns out, been _ here _ nearly the entire time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi nino im sorry nino


	3. with nothing but my friends beside me

"- they keep saying I have to work off what I stole," Nino's telling her, half an hour later on a random rooftop. They've both known how to climb since they were very young and these houses are nothing to scaling the sides of Mt. Moon. They have plenty of privacy.

(Marinette makes a mental note to see how well Adrien can climb, too).

Marinette snorts. "Nino, you've never stolen anything in your life."

"Dude, I _know that_," Nino says, a little testily. "But I can't _prove _it, and Marinette, _they took Wayzz_."

"It's okay," Marinette assures him, even though a flash of pain goes through her at the thought of someone taking Tikki like that and she knows it's not okay at all. "It's okay, Nino, we'll get him back."

"How?" he asks her, pained, and Marinette doesn't have a good answer for him.

But someone else does.

"Gastly," Plagg says, fading into view, Cheshire-smile first. "Gastly!"

Startled but also relieved, Marinette starts to smile back. "Hey, Nino? Do you know exactly _where_ your Pokéballs are?"

It's _nothing_ for Plagg to phase into a locked building and back, as it turns out. He has two Pokéballs in Nino's hands in _minutes_.

"I have been stuck here for _ages,_" Nino says, staring down at his Pokéballs. "You've been here for like ten minutes."

"Three hours," Marinette says, because she's been timing it and getting increasingly anxious, but Nino doesn't seem to hear her.

"When did you even _get_ a Gastly," Nino says helplessly, bringing his Pokéballs close and clutching them like they're going to disappear if he lets go. That's understandable, Marinette thinks, even as Nino looks up and scans around and says, "Wait, where's Tikki?"

"Um," Marinette says. "Funny story..."

Nino doesn't call his Pokémon out right away, which confuses Marinette until she realises they'd almost certainly be noticeable while they're still in town. Plagg can phase out of sight but Wayzz and, presumably, whoever Nino's second Pokémon is can't.

They almost make it out of town entirely without getting caught.

Marinette's halfway to the treeline when she hears a shout from behind them.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going? Ungrateful kid! Are you really going to abandon your Pokémon, just because you're too lazy to work off what you owe?"

Marinette whips back around, grabs Nino's arms, and hauls them into the trees_ much faster._

That is not someone who expects to be argued with. That is not someone _worth_ arguing with.

Nino is extremely willing to follow her into the forest now that he has her Pokémon back. He almost overtakes her more than once, in fact, even though he can't possibly know where they're going.

"Hey," Marinette calls out as soon as they're back where she left Adrien. He's nowhere in sight, but that doesn't really surprise her. She's certainly not making any attempt to hide that she's not alone and he's still nervous about running into anyone else. Marinette's careful not to use his name when she calls out, because she thinks if she does she's not going to get Adrien to show himself at all. "Hey, it's all right, he's a friend! Also I think we might be running from the law now so he's definitely not about to rat us out!"

"Uh, Marinette?" Nino says, looking at her oddly. He's already fumbling with his Pokéballs, though, and the second Wayzz is out Nino drops to his knees and hugs his Squirtle so tightly that Marinette is pretty sure Nino wouldn't notice if Adrien introduced himself with a song and dance number.

Wayzz is just as obviously happy to see his trainer, throwing himself at Nino as soon as he possibly can and clinging tightly. Nino releases his second Pokemon, too, and a Jigglypuff joins the huddle.

Nino never finishes his question. He's probably forgotten that he ever had one.

"It's okay," Marinette says again, more quietly, and she's not sure who she's saying it to. Then something else occurs to her. "Oh! Plagg's with me, I didn't know he followed me. But, uh, your Gastly is really great? Nino was kinda trapped in town and Plagg helped me get him out." Marinette stops, eyes widening. "That's... what he _does_, isn't it."

"What, sneaks off with other people?" Adrien says, a little sourly, swinging down out of a tree at last. He hangs from the last branch for a long moment before dropping onto the balls of his feet with a wince. The look he gives Nino is wary enough to hurt.

"I meant he rescues them," Marinette says, swinging her backpack off and pulling out the pair of shoes she bought before anything else. "He's rescuing people. Like Tikki did with me."

Nino does look up at that, but it's at the same time that Adrien takes the shoes from her and turns away to pull them on, so they don't really see each other. Marinette can't figure out whether to be relieved about that or not. Nino is inevitably going to realise who they're with, because she and Adrien already agreed to travel together and now Marinette assumes Nino is joining them because _of course_ Nino is joining them, but she doesn't mind putting it off a little bit longer.

Maybe a lot longer.

"Hey," Nino says, getting to his feet, still cradling Wayzz. His Jigglypuff crowds very close to his feet. "Where is Tikki, anyway? This is the longest I've seen you apart since... since before you met her, I think."

"Uh, she wanted to wait with him," Marinette says, truthfully, gesturing at Adrien and wincing internally. As weirdly attached to her as Tikki has always been, that's likely to leave Nino with a lot of questions. "Tikki?"

"Clefairy," Tikki says, dropping out of Adrien's tree immediately. Marinette should have guessed that. It's not like Tikki hasn't gone climbing with her often enough. "Clefairy? Clefairy!"

The Clefairy bounds over to Nino, squeaking excitedly, and Marinette sighs. Turning slightly, she finds herself explaining to Adrien, "Nino's the only one of my friends Tikki ever really liked, before you. But I haven't seen him in years. I didn't know he was still in the country at all, he said he wasn't."

"Sorry," Nino says, very quietly. "I didn't, uh, want to... admit what happened."

"Nino," Marinette says, pained. "Nino, you should have told me, I'd have come."

He shrugs, staring at the ground and holding Wayzz very, very close. "Yeah, I should have. Thanks." He glances up. "You, too, your Gastly's really the one that got us out of there, uh... I don't, I don't know your name?"

"It's okay," Marinette tells Adrien again, gently. "Seriously, it's okay."

Adrien looks at Nino.

Nino's eyes widen, but they soften a moment later, and he shifts Wayzz to one arm and holds his hand out to shake. "Uh, hi. I'm Nino but you, uh, know that."

Adrien blinks, but takes his hand. "I'm Adrien, but you knew that, too."

"Yeah," Nino says, and then shakes his head, hard. "Oh, shit, we _really _need to get away from here."

Adrien laughs, shakily. "Yeah. Yeah, we really, really do."

They can move a lot faster now that Adrien has actual shoes.

Marinette ends up taking the lead fairly quickly- Nino's rusty on his maps, and Adrien doesn't know where anything is, and once she hears the two of them finally start up a halting conversation she can't regret forging ahead anyway. Nino's always been one of her shyer friends, and he's a lot more jumpy and anxious now than he was before.

Nino never does recall either of his Pokémon but seeing as Plagg and Tikki don't even _have_ Pokéballs that's not that odd at this point.

They do still have to stop a lot more frequently than Marinette would like.

"Dude," Nino says at last, panting, hunching over with his hands on his knees. He straightens up with a groan. "Marinette, seriously, I'm not used to this anymore. Can you please take pity on us?" He gestures at Adrien, who's also breathing hard but who's making an obvious effort to hide it. "He's limping again."

"Hey," Adrien says, affronted. "I'm not."

He doesn't move.

Marinette eyes him. "You're not?"

"No," Adrien replies, drawing his cloak around himself defensively. Marinette wasn't able to get most of the fabric supplies she'd hoped for, so it's a good thing he seems very attached to the cloak already. "I'm fine, we can keep going."

Plagg bumps into him from behind and Adrien stumbles, landing hard on one foot and letting out a pained hiss.

"You know," Nino tells him, bemused, even as he offers him a hand up. "I'm not sure ghost Pokémon are supposed to be able to do that."

"Plagg's special," Adrien mutters, accepting the help and looking around. "Marinette, why did we stop here?"

Marinette moves towards the nearest rock formation and kicks aside some leaves, waving them both over towards her. "Because we needed to stop and I think there's a cave over here."

"Marinette." Nino lets go of Wayzz for possibly the first time, pressing a hand to his forehead with a wince. "I know that _you _know that's a bad idea. Caves tend to be, you know, _inhabited_."

"They do?" Adrien says, bemused.

"Not by _people_." Marinette sighs. "By Pokémon. With all of our own Pokémon we should be fine. It's probably just Zubats and Diglett, anyway, and it's humans we're trying to avoid. And it's midday, if we stay near the entrance we should be left alone."

They aren't.

But mostly because they aren't the only ones trying to take shelter.

"What the," Nino says, bewildered, toeing very carefully at the sodden lump of fur at the entrance of the cave. He lets out a very distinctly high-pitched yelp and backs into Adrien when the fur stirs weakly.

"Eevee?" the little fox Pokemon creaks, before craning its head back down to nuzzle a second Eevee. "Ee... vee."

"Oh no," Marinette says, dismayed, dropping to her knees next to the Pokemon and only distantly registering that Adrien's done the same thing beside her.

"Are you two okay?" Adrien says softly, offering his hand to the first Eevee but not touching it. He waits for the Eevee to come to him, but he breathes a sigh of relief when it does.

"Dude, when's the last time it even rained?" Nino asks, rummaging in Marinette's pack and coming up with three potions. He hands them off to her with a guilty look at her pack.

They have Nino's pack now as well, but he doesn't have much of anything in it. Nino had been at least as much of a hurry as Adrien had been and Marinette is going to have to find a different town to resupply in sooner rather than later. At least that shouldn't be a problem _quite_ yet- she doesn't think anyone saw her leave with Nino, and no one should have any idea that Adrien is with them at all. 

"I don't have any idea when it could have been raining," Adrien admits, bringing one hand to the back of his neck and averting his gaze unhappily. "I haven't really been, uh, outside."

The unspoken _at all _that hangs off the end of that sentence makes Nino and Marinette both flinch.

(Marinette suddenly has the terrible thought that maybe Adrien didn't bring shoes because he didn't _own_ any. She promptly wishes she could unthink it).

Marinette hands one potion back to Nino and one to Adrien, shifting at his side so that they can each try to heal up an Eevee at the same time. 

The Eevee that first responded to them, the one that's draped over the other, revives first and faster. It- she- nuzzles into Adrien's hand before Adrien's even quite emptied the potion, letting out a contented sigh and moving enough for Marinette to try to heal the smaller Eevee still sprawled on the cave floor.

That one is a little fluffier and has a much lighter coat in addition to being smaller, and when she raises her head and locks eyes with Marinette her ears prick up and her tail wags feebly. 

"Huh," Nino says, bemused, from behind them. "I think you two just caught Eeevee."

"I don't think I'd call this catching. And they're free to go where they want anyway," Adrien says, but even as he does the first Eevee leaps into his arms and nearly knocks him over.

"Oh, no." Nino sounds very amused now, even as the smaller Eevee presses up against Marinette's side with a happy chirr. "I'm pretty sure this counts."

"Let's just get all of us further into the cave," Marinette suggests, before _that _can escalate any further. 

(But it _is _a little weird for both of them to have found Eevee, even as a pair. Eevee aren't a common Pokemon any more than Clefairy are, and Marinette's not sure that Adrien's Gastly isn't a little more unusual than he should be, as well).

Both Eevee follow them. They do seem to have each picked a person, but Marinette notices fairly quickly that the two Pokemon will occasionally switch off between herself and Adrien.

"Adrien," she says after one such switch, careful to keep her voice down. Pokémon aren't stupid, after all. "I think these Eevee are a bonded pair."

He looks more intrigued than anything, which is a relief. Marinette hadn't been quite sure how he was going to take that information paired with the fact that the two Eevee are pretty clearly not planning to leave them already. "I think so, too. They were trying to protect each other, did you notice?"

"Yeah, and," Marinette nods back behind them. "I think they're switching off between us."

They don't go too much farther into the cave, partly because the two Eevee are still so obviously exhausted and partly because _Adrien _is still so obviously exhausted.

He's also still limping.

He's starting to limp worse than he was before, in fact.

"I'm fine," Adrien protests again, weakly, as Nino comes very close to shoving him down to sit on a rock outcropping. "It's nothing, I can keep going."

"You're _not _fine, dude," Nino tells him gently, tossing that third potion from hand to hand for a second before kneeling to yank Adrien's shoes and socks off himself. Adrien flinches back towards the wall, his arms twitching at his side for a moment like he's going to bring them up defensively, but he goes still again a moment later. 

Marinette doesn't think he sees the worried look she exchanges with Nino at that.

Adrien's famous for his modelling, but his father is famous for his designs- and _in_famous for being overprotective, to the point where even Adrien's photoshoots have always been on his father's land. That suddenly seems far more ominous than Marinette's actually thought about before.

Adrien's feet are almost as raw and bloody again as they were when Marinette first found him and she seriously considers diving back into their supplies for another potion. It's only the fact that they don't _have_ that many more that stops her. "Adrien, come on. You want this limp to be permanent?"

He scowls and looks away.

Marinette's eyebrows go up as she studies him. His Eevee (and they are going to need to name their Eevee to avoid confusion) jumps up beside him, pawing at him curiously, and Marinette hears a grumble from the empty air that can only be Plagg. "There's no _benefit_ to that, you know."

Adrien's shoulders slump and he mumbles something.

"Sorry, what?" Marinette says, taking up a position leaning against the rocks near him. "You're going to have be clearer than that."

Adrien sighs deeply, then looks her dead in the eye as he admits, reluctantly, "Father won't employ disabled models."

Marinette takes a startled step backwards and collides with the wall.

Nino lets out an unhappy hiss, even as he sprays the potion evenly over both Adrien's feet, and says through gritted teeth, "Dude, that is... that is _super _messed up, you realise that? Like. On a _few different levels_, that is _really_ messed up."

Plagg fades back into view from just behind Adrien and makes a noise at Nino that sounds like agreement.

"See," Nino tells Adrien. "Listen to your Gastly, dude, that is a _bad _plan. That is _barely _a plan at _all_."

"Yeah, he's not so great with plans," Marinette says, dryly, and Adrien makes a face at her for that even as she digs out her tarp and lays it across the floor beneath where he's sitting. A moment later she picks up both her bedroll and the one she bought for Adrien and unrolls them both on the floor on top of the tarp. "Everybody in, I guess, I did get us a tent but that seems a little pointless right now." She hesitates, then sighs. "Sorry, Nino, I really only packed initially for me and Tikki and when I resupplied I _still_ thought it was only Adrien joining us. This is all we've got right now."

"No worries, I get it. I appreciate it, seriously," Nino says hastily, dropping onto the bedroll with a sigh and leaning against Adrien's perch to glance up at him. "Get back down here, dude, it's way warmer. Looking at you is making _me_ cold."

Adrien's gaze flickers between them for a moment, but then Tikki nudges him from the side, and he's startled enough to go tumbling neatly off the rock and onto the bedrolls. Nino and Marinette both reach out hastily to catch him, but Plagg and both Eevee beat them to it, ducking under him just enough that none of them are hurt.

"You know," Nino says, even as he finds the edge of one of the bedrolls and starts zipping it together with the other one. "It's still, like, the middle of the day. I kind of thought we were just taking a break?"

Marinette shrugs, going to zip up the opposite side as Adrien watches them both warily. "I mean, initially I thought that, too. But this'll do a better job breaking our trail, right? And it's not like the two of us got much rest last night, honestly. Well, okay, that and your feet are worse than I thought they were," she adds, turning to Adrien.

Still sitting at the edge of the blankets, Adrien winces and draws his knees up to his chest, oddly self-conscious again. 

Marinette pauses. He'd been more open than this with her last night. He'd been more open with her just this morning.

"Hey, Adrien," she says, casting around for something she can ask that might make him more comfortable again. She _thinks_ that'll help. "Can you shove my pack over here? It's gonna be close in here no matter what, but I think that's gonna work in our favour. We're not going to be cold for very long, at least."

Adrien honestly looks a little confused even as he hands her the pack, but Nino brightens immediately. "Oh, yeah, sure. You're, uh, you're okay with that?" He gestures, a little vaguely. "I, uh, I was kinda planning to have Wayzz out still?"

"Squirtle," Wayzz says, quietly. Wayzz still hasn't left Nino's side once since being released, and Marinette's not even sure where his Pokéball is at this point. Nino's Jigglypuff, too, has squirmed under the blankets with them, and Marinette can't honestly blame Nino for not wanting to recall his Pokémon.

Also, at this point she and Adrien have five Pokémon and one Pokéball between them. She really doesn't think she can comment. She's never actually tried to catch Tikki before and she's not about to start now, and she thinks Adrien must feel the same way about Plagg. 

"C'mon, Nino, you know how I am with Tikki," she points out, wryly, unzipping the pack again. She hesitates over their last potion for a minute, but they really should save it for an emergency. "And yeah, I mean, I know we were kids but...it's reassuring, right?" She shrugs. She doesn't actually want to explain out loud if she doesn't have to, and from the relief she sees on Nino's face for a second he doesn't want to either.

"Come give me a hand," she says to Adrien, rummaging and pulling out fabric scraps again. They aren't as necessary tonight, not when they do have at least one more bedroll, but then she hadn't been planning for Nino.

The fabric she's carrying is very soft and once Adrien helps her line as much of the inside of the combined sleeping bag with it as they can it's _very_ warm and comfortable.

The end result isn't truly large enough for all of them, especially with everyone's Pokémon all crammed in alongside them, but it's comfortable and cosy. Once Nino finds her lantern and turns it on at the side of the cave, it's also more than adequately lit.

"There," Marinette says, satisfied. "Now we're hidden _and_ warm."

Adrien's somehow ended up pinned between them, an Eeevee on either side of him and Tikki and Plagg both hovering around his head. He looks- he looks a little overwhelmed, actually.

Marinette exchanges another look with Nino, then manoeuvrers carefully around everyone as they shift the blankets around enough to have a clear view of the path to the exit.

She wants to be surprised at the immediate, obvious way Adrien relaxes. She wants to be, but she's not. 

"Hey, why don't you let your Rattata out, too," she suggests, crawling back into their pile of contented Pokemon. Tikki, she notices with amusement, has taken a very obvious liking both to Adrien and to his Gastly. Wayzz, too, for all that he's still clinging to his trainer, is looking between the Clefairy and Gastly with interest. "She's pretty small, right? And we definitely don't want to risk a fire, but all of us together should be plenty warm enough." 

It takes some rearranging. Nino's Pokémon very much don't want to leave his side, and they end up at one of the edges, and that leaves Nino close to one side and Marinette tries to take the middle so that Adrien can sleep nearest the exit but her Eevee objects to that. Moments later, so does his. 

"No, come on, let me stay over here," she protests, even as her Eevee bites down on her pant leg and tries very hard to pull her back towards the side. Adrien's Eevee, in contrast, has curled up on top of his legs and is giving them both what she is willing to _swear_ is a smug look. 

"Um," Adrien says, softly. "I think they want me to stay in the middle."

Plagg makes that same chuffing, laughing noise and ghosts away, fading back into view near the cave's opening and settling there. He's technically blocking the exit, but seeing as he's only tenuously physical that doesn't really seem worth worrying about. 

"Are you gonna be okay with that, Adrien?" Marinette asks, softly. She's acutely aware that Adrien probably feels the same way about feeling trapped as Nino does about being separated from Wayzz, as Marinette herself does about feeling lost or lied to. 

(Nino has _never_ liked being separated from Wayzz, for longer than she's known him. Nino's parents had hardly ever been home and he and Wayzz had relied mostly on each other since they were all very young. Marinette can't imagine, and is honestly trying very hard not to think about, how terrified and _traumatized_ Nino must have been at being forcibly separated from his Squirtle. He's been gone for over a _year_, she doesn't _want_ to think about that). 

"I... think so." Adrien's voice is getting softer, though, and he's holding himself uncomfortably. "I'm just, uh, not... not really used to this." 

Marinette winces. They probably do have to explain after all. 

Nino manages, somehow, to flip over onto his stomach without disturbing anyone else too badly. A moment later Wayzz sprawls across his back, clinging tightly, like his shell can protect them both. "Yeah, that's understandable dude. I'm not gonna lie, we always were a little odd about it." He shrugs, as much as he can once his Jigglypuff squirms down near everyone's feet and forces him to scrunch in on himself even more. "I was, uh, kind of the weird kid. Marinette's the only person I really hung out with, and my parents weren't real... involved... so we had a lot of sleepovers." 

Marinette rolls her eyes, despite knowing he can't see her from here. It _is _embarrassing to admit that they'd cuddled all the time, even as kids, but she doesn't think that Adrien is likely to know that, and after the night before she's not sure she _wants_ him to know that. He'd seemed so happy to lean in to her, she doesn't want him to be embarrassed about it _now._ "Adrien, Wayzz and Nino stayed at my place for an entire summer without his parents noticing. And we're pretty sure my parents just kind of _pretended _not to notice? They really _had _to know Nino and Wayzz weren't going home but they never said anything, so. We shared a room for a while, and let me warn you right away, Nino cuddles in his sleep." 

Nino sounds very uncomfortable as he says, "You did _not_ have to tell him that." 

"You're right, I didn't," Marinette returns. "He's gonna find out for himself in, like, an hour." 

Adrien's still very quiet. 

Plagg phases closer, and Tikki fights her way up between Marinette and Adrien. 

Marinette sighs and squirms over onto her stomach herself, wincing a little as she does accidentally shove Adrien further into Nino. Adrien lets out a soft surprised sound, but says nothing about it, so Marinette doesn't say anything either. 

"Sorry, Nino," Marinette says, half through a yawn. "I know it's early, but we didn't really get any sleep last night. _Someone_ was on the verge of _freezing to death_ at the time." 

"I would have been okay," Adrien mutters, but he doesn't sound all that convinced himself. 

"Dude." Nino props himself up on one elbow carefully, staring at him. "Did you come out here _without supplies_?"

Adrien squirms slightly, but stops when he seems to realise just how close they all are. "Not you, too." 

"It's winter!" Nino exclaims, still staring. "It's supposed to snow! Dude, you could have _died_!" 

"So I've heard," Adrien says, into the blankets. "A few times." 

"Didn't, though," Marinette says brightly. "And we have supplies now." 

"I thought we were sleeping," Adrien says, still into the blankets. The little bit of his face that she can still see is very red. "Are we?" 

"Yeah, we're sleeping," Marinette assures him, settling down herself. It _is_ very warm now, heat radiating out along her side where Adrien is, and it's a lot more comfortable than she's felt in a while. She's starting to appreciate their Pokémon's insistence that Adrien stay between her and Nino; she can't imagine Adrien's ever done anything like this before, and she really hopes he experiences the same feeling of safety from it that she always does. "Nino, would you and Wayzz mind taking first watch?" 

Nino gives her a thumbs up from where Wayzz is still clinging to his back. "No problem. Just don't ask me to move." 

Marinette glances down at the Eevee draped over herself and Adrien. "I don't think anyone's moving. Thanks, Nino." 

"First watch?" Adrien asks quietly. 

Marinette looks at him instead of the Eevee. "Yeah. If you have enough people you should always set a watch, because not all wild Pokémon are friendly, but I'm kind of assuming there are also gonna be people after us. So it's doubly important." 

Adrien stills for a moment before reaching down to run one hand through his Eevee's mane. "Sorry. I didn't want to cause anyone trouble." 

"Wouldn't say it's you causing it, dude," Nino says, tiredly. "Besides. There's probably someone after _me_ by now." 

"Hey, about that," Marinette says, but hesitantly, because she needs to know this but she's also not too sure that she _wants_ to. "Nino... what _happened_?" 

Nino makes an indistinct noise and settles more firmly into the blankets. She can barely see him over Adrien now, but she hears him mutter, "I was dumb, okay, that's what happened." 

"Nino," she says. "Come on, it's me. You can tell me." 

She feels Adrien shift slightly and then freeze and she winces a little as she realises he's trapped between them for this conversation. "Um, if it's me you don't want to know, I can go wait outside or something." 

Nino knocks his shoulder against Adrien's and then stays just as close to him. "No, dude, that's not it at all. And you need to stay off your feet for a while, anyway. It's just embarrassing, all right?" He sighs. "Seriously, Marinette, I was stupid. You know I left without much money, right?" 

"Yeah, because you took off early," Marinette says. "Without any of the rest of us. Without _telling_ us, in fact." 

"You wanted to wait!" Nino sounds uncomfortable. "I knew you wanted to wait, and I needed to leave, I didn't wanna pressure you to come with."

"You wouldn't have- wait, don't change the subject." Marinette props herself up on one elbow, leaning slightly over Adrien, who's starting to look very uncertain about how much physical contact is going on. He's not trying to pull away at all, though, he's actually starting to relax into them both, so Marinette isn't too worried about that. "Nino, seriously, what happened?" 

Nino scowls and reaches back with one hand to run it along Wayzz's shell. "The store said they'd be willing to give me an advance on some really basic gear if I would work there for a day or two. I mean _really_ basic gear, just, like, a firestarter and a couple Pokéballs, I figured that was all I needed. But-" His hand presses more firmly on Wayzz's shell. "But it wasn't a couple days. Well, it _was_, but then they said I owed them room and board for that, too. And then they kept _adding_ things, and they took-" His voice falters. 

"It's okay," Marinette says, hastily. "It's okay, Nino, I get it. You can stop." 

"Good." Nino draws in a shuddery breath and buries his head in his arms. "I've tried to run away before, that's why they had my Pokémon." 

Adrien makes a soft, pained noise and Marinette realises she's reached out for Tikki herself. 

"That's why I said they're probably after _me_, dude," Nino says tiredly. "I don't think anyone really knows for sure that Marinette helped, so she's probably still safe, but _we_ should definitely both be staying out of sight." 

Marinette drops flat again, nudging her side into Adrien's just enough that he shifts into Nino in turn. She sighs in relief at how much warmer it is with everyone under the blankets. "Yeah. My vote is we rest up, then stay in the forest as long as we can while we get _far_ away from here." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _you could have died_


	4. we will be heroes

"We are going to need supplies, though," Nino points out eventually.

Marinette shakes her head, knowing that he'd have to move to see her now. "We could _use_ more supplies, but we have most of the important ones. If one of us can catch a fire Pokémon that'll help but I have a firestarter and a fishing pole, I don't have very _many_ more fabric supplies but I have enough to make sure we all have warm cloaks, and Adrien has shoes now. I'd _like_ to get as many potions as we can as soon as we can but otherwise we should be okay." She gestures around them. "Not like we don't know how to stay warm."

"Yeah, that's true." She hears Nino move again. "I think Adrien's asleep, actually. Wow, he dropped off really fast, is that normal?"

Marinette lets out a deep breath. "I have no idea, Nino, I met him last night. We didn't _get _any sleep because I am not kidding about the freezing to death thing, and I'm not sure how recently he snuck out. I found him under a pile of leaves at a campsite but I don't really think he was _asleep_."

She can _hear_ Nino's wince. "I mean, I guess I can't say a ton since I left without any supplies, too, but...he was really in a hurry, huh?"

Adrien _is_ asleep, she can hear his breathing, slow and deep and even. "He said he didn't know when else he'd have a chance. Plagg let him out."

"Let him- oh. Oh, damn." Nino shifts, too, moving like he wants to drape an arm over Adrien and then thinks better of it at the last minute. "Those rumours were _true_?"

"Yeah," Marinette says, biting back a yawn. "Seems like it, anyway. He tried _really_ hard not to let me recognise him, and he's still avoiding anyone else- that's why he was waiting for me back in the woods. I never would have brought you anywhere near him if you weren't, well, you."

Nino laughs. "Uh, thanks for that. I mean, it's his Gastly that helped me out, I'm not about to tell anyone. I owe the dude, but even if I didn't, I wouldn't do that to him."

"There's something weird about his Gastly," Marinette says, thoughtfully. 

Nino snorts and shuffles around again once before going still. "Yeah, he's too much like your Tikki, is what's weird. He's picky, too, isn't he? Like Tikki. And Wayzz," he adds, almost as an afterthought. 

Marinette blinks. "_Wayzz _is picky?"

"Um, yeah?" Nino sounds surprised. "He really only ever liked me, you, and your parents. And I guess Adrien now, as well."

Marinette picks her head up at that, just enough to see the way that while Wayzz is still clinging to Nino's back the Squirtle _has_ shifted nearer to Adrien. With the way Tikki is burrowed between them and one of the Eevee is sleeping on top of Adrien, the other teenager is penned in by Pokemon by now. "It looks like they all like Adrien. He said Plagg is pretty choosy about who he likes, too."

"But Plagg followed you into town."

"Yeah." Marinette's brow furrows. "After I left Tikki with Adrien."

"Marinette, I haven't seen Tikki agree to stay with someone else in the entire time I've known you."

Marinette shrugs, knowing that even if Nino can't see her he knows her well enough to guess at the movement. "I think it might have been partly because he's hurt, but she liked him right away."

Nino sighs. "I missed talking to you, but Adrien isn't the only one who should really get some sleep."

"I missed you too, Nino," Marinette says softly. "You should have _told_ me."

"Told you _what_?" He sounds embarrassed again. "That I was dumb and got myself into a problem I couldn't get out of?"

"You were being taken advantage of," Marinette retorts, more harshly than she means to. "And you lied to me about it! You said you were in the Seafoam Islands!"

Nino doesn't reply to that. 

After an uncomfortable stretch of silence, Marinette groans and turns onto her side, reaching out to gently move Tikki out of her way. It leaves her entirely too close to Adrien, but he really is sound asleep. She's glad for that; she still doesn't know how long he's been running around outside barefoot and without any supplies. 

(They _all_ really need to eat something, now that she thinks about it. She's suddenly seriously concerned about how long it might have been since either of the boys ate, especially if they were adding onto Nino's already obviously trumped-up charges every time he did. She knows him, she knows he _would_ have tried to eat less, and she doesn't know Adrien yet but she suspects he hasn't been eating that well either, considering he hasn't said a word about it and it's been over half a day now. Her own eating habits aren't fantastic, but she has a sinking feeling that theirs are worse for far more sinister reasons).

"You know, now I'm worried about everyone else," Marinette says softly. "If _you_ were lying to me... Nino, you're the worst liar I know. What if the others are in trouble, too?"

"Haven't they been calling you?" Nino's voice is muffled. He must still be clinging to his Pokémon.

"Yeah-" She groans again. "_That's _why you were sending letters."

"Well, _yeah_," Nino says, exasperated. "Dude, I can't lie to your _face_, I've never been any good at that! But if the others have been calling, don't you have some idea where they are?"

"They always call from Pokécenters," Marinette points out. "A lot of those look generic enough that if they told me they were in one place but they actually weren't, I'd never know."

"Ouch." There's another stretch of silence, but this one is much less uncomfortable. "You want to go find them, don't you."

"I need to make sure they're okay!" Marinette flinches when she's loud enough that Adrien stirs. She lowers her voice. "Nino, _you_ weren't okay. Adrien definitely wasn't okay. I don't know anymore if any of our other friends could be in trouble, too, I don't know what's been going on out here. I _thought_ I did but now I'm not so sure."

"Yeah, the news did not have anything to say about predatory company stores, or I'd have been more careful." She hears Nino yawn, before he says, quietly, "Sorry, Mari. I was trying not to make this your problem, too."

"Nino, it was always going to be my problem just as much as yours. We're friends, and you needed help." Marinette finds herself yawning, too. "Sorry- been up all night. He'd stopped shivering and didn't start again 'til we were warmed up a little, I didn't want to risk falling asleep."

"I feel so freaking bad for laughing at those rumours all those years now," Nino says quietly. "Dude _really_ doesn't want to go back, huh?"

Marinette thinks about how badly Adrien's feet are injured, about how reluctant he is to let them treat them, about the way he'd tried so hard not to let her recognise him in the first place. About how he'd tried to run from her when he realised that she _had_. "I think if we'd ever believed those rumours, we should have gone and broken him out ourselves." She sighs. "But they were _rumours_, Nino. _No one_ actually believed them."

Quietly, Nino says, "We should have checked."

"Should haves aren't any help now." Marinette rests her head on her arms. It's warm in the cave, far warmer than she and Adrien had managed on their own the night before- having a second sleeping roll obviously helps, but she thinks it's Nino's presence, and the weight of the Pokémon around them and curled on top of them, that makes the real difference. "Last night was a lot rougher than I expected. Wake me to keep watch after you? I don't think we should make Adrien take a turn just yet, I think the longer he stays still somewhere warm right now the better."

"i don't think the dude is gonna want to do a lot of staying still, Marinette." Nino sighs heavily. "I don't- uh, think that I want to do very much of it anymore, either. I just- I want to go on the journey I left for in the first place, you know?' He sounds as unhappy as Marinette's ever heard him. "I can't- get back those years, but - I can do what I wanted to do then, now."

"I always wanted to go with you, but not like this," Marinette answers softly.

"Why _did_ you wait?" Nino asks. "I always wondered, and you've never said."

Marinette doesn't answer him, at first.

"Marinette?" Nino says quietly. "Dude, you don't actually have to tell me. I just, uh, I really would have liked to go with you, too."

"Thanks, Nino." She blinks and finds herself gazing intently at the top of Adrien's head, at the way his hair is a fluffy mess that covers his eyes. That seems intentional. She wonders if he's awake. 

She also wonders if he wants to borrow her hairbrush, but that's something she can ask him later.

"Sorry, if you were expecting some great reason. It isn't that interesting." She sighs, and Tikki makes a quiet sound and cuddles closer to her. Even as Marinette reaches a hand out to her Clefairy, she notices her Pokémon isn't reacting as much to Marinette's own distress as she usually does- the Clefairy doesn't seem to want to move too far away from Adrien. "I just... wanted more time with my parents, I guess. I know Grandma is still around, she's still _travelling_, but Maman's father died while she was on her journey- and I know Papa wishes he saw more of his mother than he does, too, and he hasn't seen _his_ dad since before I was born. I didn't want to be another person in their lives who took off and didn't come back."

She can _hear_ Nino rolling his eyes. "Of course you'll come back, Marinette, they should know you well enough to know that." He pauses, then says, guiltily, "Although I guess it might be a while before you can, now."

"Yeah, you know, running from the law was not actually on my bucket list. If it even _is_ the law. What the hell is going on?" Adrien stirs and Marinette lowers her voice. "Seriously, do you think- do you think you're not the only one this happened to?"

"I'm not even the only one it happened to _here_," Nino returns, much more quietly. "There were others- but most of them didn't have Pokémon at all, and the store owners didn't manage to get anyone else's Pokéballs before they ran." He sounds ashamed of that, even as he adds, "I think I'm going to take after you and Adrien from now on and just- not _use_ Pokéballs."

"You realise we aren't using them because we haven't actually _caught _any Pokémon, right?" Marinette asks wryly. "Seriously, Adrien's Rattata is the only one either of us has caught, and," She nods towards where the little rat is burrowed in alongside Adrien's shoulder, tiny claws hooked into his cloak. "Honestly, I don't think she's going back in her Pokéball any time soon, either."

Nino stifles a laugh. "Yeah, probably not. I think I'm okay with that." He sighs. "Maybe we _shouldn't_ catch too many more Pokémon, then. We don't want to be visible, you know?"

"We'll catch as many Pokémon as we want, thanks," Marinette says, fists clenching for a moment. She's not letting what's happened to Nino and Adrien scare them out of their own journeys. "I'm not letting anyone else stop us doing what we _want_ to do, not now." She yawns. "Right now, though, what I want to do is sleep. Wake me for the next watch?"

"Yeah, sure... If our Pokémon don't end up just dividing it up amongst themselves."

Marinette falls asleep still snickering at that.

When she wakes, she's disoriented for a long moment- there's more space and yet more warmth under the blankets, and when she goes to roll over she quickly discovers why.

Adrien is clinging to her. 

They're still hemmed in by their Pokémon, but Plagg and Tikki have settled on Adrien's other side, and at some point while they were asleep Adrien had flipped onto his side and wrapped his arms around her waist. He's still scrunched lower in the blankets than she is, so his face is nearly buried in her neck, and Marinette feels her face reddening almost immediately.

She hears a click.

"Nino," she hisses, trying as hard as she can to keep her voice down. "Where did you even _get_ a camera?"

From the way the air shifts around her as he clears his throat quietly, she thinks he's sitting up behind her somewhere. "I didn't, it was in your pack. And before you say anything about going through your stuff, I didn't, his Rattata climbed into your pack a few hours ago and threw some stuff out and went to sleep in there." She can hear the amusement in her friend's voice.

"Maman must have snuck it in." Marinette tries to shift, but Adrien's arms tighten around her and he lets out a soft, distressed whine. "So, I don't know if I'm going to be available for the next watch."

"I'm still pretty awake." She hears cloth rustling, and then Nino lowers his voice. "I don't think I can sleep just yet, anyway. Not... until we're farther away."

Marinette can't help the worried glance she darts down where Adrien's feet are hidden under the pile of bedding and Pokémon. "I'm sorry we didn't keep going."

"Don't be sorry, it's not your fault. Dude, it's not even Adrien's fault, if he was that injured and _still _ran from you I'm not about to blame him." He's still quiet. "Besides, I... get it. I practically jumped the counter as soon as I saw you, remember? I would have gone without shoes, too. I would have gone without _clothes_. I've been sleeping _in_ my clothes in case- in case-"

"In case you got a chance to leave," Marinette finishes for him, her heart aching. That feeling only strengthens when she looks down at Adrien scrunched up against her. "Oh, Nino. I'm so sorry, I should have known something was wrong."

"How? I didn't tell you. I kept it from you; I lied to you, and I know how you feel about lying." Nino leans over them both, just long enough to pull the blanket around them further, and Marinette doesn't realise that Adrien had been shivering again until after Nino's done it.

That's almost enough to sidetrack her again. "I- we can talk about that later. I think- I think he might be getting sick."

"Yeah, I'm not surprised, given how unprepared they were." The 'they' throws Marinette for a bit despite herself, before she catches on that Nino probably means Plagg. It's not until then that it occurs to Marinette that Wayzz must still be clinging just as tightly to Nino, given that she can't see him from here. His Jigglypuff, too, is out of sight. 

She wonders what his Jigglypuff's name is. She knows Nino has always wanted to name all his Pokémon, after he's been so close to Wayzz for so long.

Nino swallows hard and admits, very quietly, "I don't think I want to go into any towns to buy medicine."

Marinette shifts and goes still before she can disturb Adrien. "That's all right, Nino, I've definitely been assuming any trips into town are on me. Adrien can't go, and I didn't _think_ you'd want to, honestly." She passes one hand over her forehead, tiredly. "But we should probably try and stock up somewhere out of the way, then camp for as long as possible."

Nino pauses.

"What?" Marinette asks, tiredly.

"...I don't really want _you_ to go into town, either," he says slowly.

Marinette scowls and starts to prop herself up on one elbow, as carefully as she can. Adrien doesn't move. "Nino-"

"I'm not going to stop you!" he says hastily. "And you're smarter than me. But I'm- I'm still kind of afraid of the same thing happening to you."

"It didn't." Marinette drops back down and Adrien curls into her more. She has to resist the urge to card a hand through his hair- she's only known him a day, and he isn't awake. His Eevee wanders up and sprawls sleepily across his shoulder, which makes Marinette glance around long enough to see that Plagg and Tikki are still hovering behind him. "It didn't, Nino, that was the last store I went to. They must be targeting specific people." She freezes.

Nino shifts uneasily. "What is it?"

"You left really early." Marinette feels her way around the sudden idea carefully. "I left really late. Nino, I think they're going after _kids_." 

His sharp inhale and sudden explosive cursing is what finally wakes Adrien.

* * *

Once they've cleared enough of the bedding away to safely start a fire- after Marinette checks both that the smoke will vent well and that it shouldn't be visible enough to lead pursuit straight to them- they both fill Adrien in.

Adrien's sitting cross-legged in front of the small amount of firewood Nino's gathered when Marinette returns. He looks up when she ducks back in, but the Eevee asleep on his lap prevents him getting up to greet her. Nino drops into a similar position on the other side of the fire with Wayzz and both Tikki and her own Eevee press in beside Marinette as she joins them.

"So what's going on?" Adrien asks, a little hesitantly.

"That's just it. We're not sure." Marinette reaches out and buries a hand in her Eevee's mane. "That town was blackmailing Nino into staying, and we don't think he's the only one they tried it on."

Nino leans against Wayzz. Marinette wonders painfully if Wayzz would have been a Wartortle by now under different circumstances.

"They-" Adrien blinks. "Didn't you say- aren't you the friend who left first?"

"Yes," Nino says, slowly. "Yeah, I left early. Everyone else waited."

Adrien sits back, cautiously, and Plagg hovers close enough for some of his gas trail to pass through Adrien's shoulder. "So... why didn't any of your other friends come through that same town?"

Marinette turns wide eyes to Nino, only to find he's already staring back at her.

Nino takes a shaky breath. Then another. "I don't know. Maybe they did and just never stopped at the same store I did." He rests a hand on Wayzz's shell. "Nothing happened to Marinette..."

"Okay, we don't have the same definition of _nothing_," Marinette tells him. "But also, we don't know that they didn't mean it to. I hadn't run out of money, for one thing, but that was also the last store I went to and _someone _was definitely trying to chase us when we left. What if they had every intention of doing the same thing, but they were waiting for some reason?" She considers that longer, brows furrowed as she reaches absently out towards Tikki, who immediately cuddles close. "I'm older than you were, so they might have been warier. Maybe there's some other reason they wouldn't have gone after the others?"

"That doesn't explain how I never _saw_ any of the others," Nino points out. "I mean, we aren't _that_ far off the main route."

Marinette pauses.

"What?" Adrien asks, turning to give her all of his attention. Plagg drifts through his shoulder and _also_ gives Marinette his full attention, which is a little unnerving. "Marinette?"

"Nino," she says, slowly. "You didn't bring a lot of supplies when you left."

"Ah, no." In stark contrast to Adrien, Nino focuses his gaze on his Jigglypuff. His hand on Wayzz's shell is very tense. 

"Hey-" Adrien interjects.

"I brought shoes, dude," Nino says dryly. "I had more than _nothing_."

Adrien flinches and falls silent.

Marinette glares at Nino, then shifts her attention to Adrien, since it isn't as though they don't have time. "Adrien, we all left with what we _could_ take with us. We know you did everything you could."

He rubs the back of his neck, dropping his gaze. "I should have planned better, or left sooner."

Nino raises his hand. "I dunno, dude, I think I can pretty definitively tell you neither of those things helped _me_."

Her attention dragged back, Marinette says urgently, "That's what I was going to ask about before- Nino, we actually _aren't _near the main route, we started heading away from it this morning. We're- I dunno, kind of at an angle? You left without a map, didn't you?"

Nino hunches in on himself, giving him a distressing resemblance to his Squirtle. "Yeah, I did. I guess I figured- I mean, lots of people take these roads, right? I thought I'd be able to just, I don't know, follow the route the others took."

Marinette raises an eyebrow. "How did that work out for you?"

He glares at her, although Nino's glares are about as far from intimidating as they could possibly be.

She relents. "I'm sorry, that was mean. My point is we _aren't_ on the main route. It's totally possible the others were never anywhere near here at all. I think that town's a trap, Nino."

Adrien shuffled backwards as much as his Eevee would let him at some point, and Plagg is still hovering, but he speaks up. "If it is, and it's taking advantage of people... shouldn't we stop them?"

Marinette and Nino look at each other.

There's more fear in Nino's eyes than she's ever seen.

But glinting just behind it is a steely determination.


	5. we lean on one another/and make each other stronger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...happy quarantine?
> 
> there is a respiratory illness in this fic, which i swear has been a plot point from the beginning, but a warning here: that hypothermia tag stayed for a reason, and hypothermia has consequences, including pneumonia, so theres respiratory symptoms in this fic- please be careful, i know thats likely to trigger anxiety for some of us right now.

"So what should we-" Adrien stops, choking off his last word. 

Marinette leans back, alarmed. "Adrien?" 

He tries to wave her off, but when he tries to continue he starts coughing instead. 

"Dude-" Nino starts to get up, immediately looking for Marinette's pack, but she already has it open. By the time Nino's hovering beside her she's already handing him their last potion. 

"I'm fine," Adrien says, hoarsely, without meeting either of their eyes. "We can keep, keep making plans." His hand clenches tightly around the blanket still draped around him- Nino and Marinette hadn't wanted to take it from him until they had to. 

His Eevee makes a sad, inquisitive noise. 

Plagg is not nearly so polite. Plagg darts towards Nino quick enough that Nino, catching on, tosses the potion back to Marinette, and Marinette follows Plagg forward before the poison Pokémon can start trying to drag her towards his human. 

"I'm okay," Adrien protests, trying to scoot backwards, but his feet hit the cave floor when he does and his head snaps back with a gasp. 

And then forward, with another round of wracking coughs. 

Marinette stops, not wanting to startle him again, but that leaves her frozen in place. She doesn't want to scare him, and he's still flinching away even now, but he obviously needs the potion. 

He needs more than just one feeble potion but one potion is what they have. 

Her own Eevee brushes past her legs with an alarmed squeak and rushes to Adrien. 

Adrien looks back up, his eyes watering from coughing so hard, most of his expression hidden where he's trying to cough into his sleeve. What she can see of his expression, though, isn't what she'd have expected. 

He looks embarrassed. He looks _ashamed._

He flinches away again when he realises he's met her eyes. 

Acting on a hunch, Marinette offers the potion to Plagg. Plagg shouldn't be able to take it from her, he really really shouldn't, but she remembers Plagg knocking her aside when they'd met and she's not surprised when the Gastly manages to snag the potion and drop it into Adrien's lap. 

"Take the potion, dude." Nino's voice is hushed, but it fills the cavern. "You don't wanna feel lousy while we're planning, right?" 

Adrien smiles weakly in response, and Marinette tries not to let her breath back out too obviously. She hadn't been sure, in light of that expression, how she was going to convince Adrien that he needed the healing without making him feel like- 

Like what, she's not sure. 

He looked ashamed. She can't stop fixating on that, even as her feet take her back towards the fire, even as she settles at a point halfway between the boys. She's not sure if Adrien's ashamed of letting them find out he's sick, or if it's that he's sick at all, and either way she doesn't like it. 

She and Nino are studiously studying the fire, carefully not looking at Adrien or at each other, so she only knows that Adrien's listened when she hears his breathing ease and Plagg totes the empty potion bottle back over. 

"Thank you," Marinette tells Plagg gravely, taking the bottle from him and setting it aside. Nino's found her pot to hang over the fire and is looking over her ingredients, so Marinette finds her spare pot so that she can start to boil water for disinfecting as soon as she has the chance. 

She wishes Nino or Adrien had a spare set of clothes between them. She's not so sure she wants to try and disinfect the clothes she'd found them in so much as she'd like to burn them and find them both entirely new clothes. 

She does still have her fabric and sewing supplies. She doesn't have enough for full outfits, especially after Adrien's cloak and both their socks, but she might have enough to make a decent start on at least new shirts for them. She hasn't looked at Nino's too closely, but she's uncomfortably sure that the bit of silver embroidery on the shoulder that she sees in flashes as he moves is the logo of the store that trapped him. 

She doesn't want him wearing that, and she doesn't like the way that's her first thought, because the whole _point _is that she doesn't want someone else to have that much of a say over what Nino gets to do or wear. She wants him to be able to wear whatever he wants, be able to go wherever he wants, because that had been _taken _from him and she hadn't known and she hadn't know to come help. 

She would have come to help. She would have come if he'd given her even the slightest hint that he was in trouble. 

He hadn't even been _far_. All this time she's been thinking of her best friend as being unbearably far away, in a different region altogether, somewhere she couldn't quickly follow, and it had taken her less than two days to get to him. On foot, with an injured companion. 

She could have had Nino back _years _ago. 

And if she doesn't like the idea of Nino having no other clothes- Adrien's clothes are all Gabriel brand, and Marinette's not fond of that, either. She doesn't like the idea of both her friends wearing reminders of the people who'd trapped and controlled them.

She might not know any details about what happened to Adrien, but she can read his reactions and make a pretty good guess. 

She can't think of very many reasons he'd be ashamed to let them know he's sick. 

"Dude, you've got sweet and sour curry stuff in your pack," Nino says, suddenly, sounding happier than he has since she'd found him. "I didn't think you liked that all that much." 

Dragged back to reality, Marinette winces and rubs the back of her neck. She'd never expected to have to explain that to anyone. "I, uh, I don't." 

"But you brought it." Adrien's voice is soft and halting, but he doesn't start coughing again. He doesn't look up at them again, either, which only lends credence to some of Marinette's suspicions. "If you don't like it, why did you bring it?" 

Marinette swallows. "Because it's Nino's favourite." 

Nino stills, having drawn his hand partway from her pack with the curry ingredients. Without looking up from what he's doing, he says, softly, "I wasn't with you." 

"Yeah, I know." Marinette wraps her arms around herself, suddenly cold even in the cosy warmth of the cave. "I, uh, I missed you. Maybe it's kinda dumb, but it reminds me of you?" 

Nino sits back on his heels, ducking his head and staring intently at the berries he's still holding. "Oh." 

There's a lot more emotion in that single syllable than Marinette thinks he knows. 

She sighs and scoots over by him, gently taking about half the berries and setting them back down near the fire. "You're probably still better at making it than I am, though. Adrien? Do you want-" She looks over at Adrien, expecting to see him tracking their conversation like he seems to have a tendency to do. 

He's fallen asleep, his head tipped to the side and resting against Tikki. Plagg's settled in on his other side, making no attempt to look like he's doing anything but guarding him, and both Eevee are curled around each other in his lap. 

Marinette exhales. "Guess we'll save him some." 

"Sure, if _you _make it." Nino's already setting things up with the same brisk efficiency she remembers from childhood camping trips, though. They'd always partnered up for those camping trips, and it's so easy to fall right back into that rhythm. "You taught me how to make this curry!" 

"And you kept making it and improved, where I didn't," Marinette counters, settling in herself and half-hoping that the scent of the food will wake Adrien enough to eat.

It doesn't, ultimately, and she ends up going over to try and nudge him awake just long enough to eat something. She'd actually kind of prefer to let him sleep, but she doesn't know exactly why he's never once brought up food and she wants to try and make sure he's not worried about asking. He did seem upset already that he didn't feel like he had anything to offer. 

That threatens to take her down a dark train of thought. 

Marinette does stop before coming too close to Adrien, though, remembering the way he tends to jerk away whenever they startle him. "Hey, Plagg?" 

"Gastly." Plagg floats a little closer to her, though he doesn't move too far from Adrien. He rolls upside down and then looks up at her, which is a lot more disconcerting than she'd have guessed. "Gastly?" 

Marinette holds out the bowl of curry. "The rest of this is for Adrien. Do you think he'll wake up long enough to eat it?" 

In lieu of an answer, Plagg turns back and dives at Adrien's shoulder, phasing through it at the last second and startling Adrien awake himself. 

"Whuh?" Adrien gasps, scrabbling backwards with one hand as his eyes scan the cave. His brows knit in confusion as he reaches up to rub at his shoulder, relaxing when he realises Plagg is right there. It takes him a little longer to focus on Nino and Marinette again. 

Nino quirks an eyebrow at him. "Hey, you with us, dude?" 

Adrien blinks slowly, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I am now. Sorry." 

Marinette waves him off. "No, I'm sorry, I asked Plagg to get your attention because I was trying to avoid startling you. Didn't work out." 

Plagg makes that now-familiar chuffing laugh sound, looping closer to Adrien. Adrien reaches up and trails one hand after his Gastly with a rueful smile. "Plagg likes to make people jump, I don't think he'd have passed that chance up." 

"Here, we wanted to know if you wanted to eat." Marinette offers him the bowl, glancing back to see Nino's already busy washing what they've used. She feels a bright pang of pained gratitude to have him and Wayzz with them again. She'd have preferred that they really were enjoying the Seafoam Islands, but she'd missed them more badly than she'd wanted to admit to herself. 

She wants to say she'd never blamed him for leaving but she had, at first. She'd been too hurt at being left behind _not _to. It had taken her time before she'd slowly started to accept that Nino's leaving was not, and never had been, about her. Nino had gone because he couldn't stay any longer. They'd been getting older, and he couldn't keep sleeping on her floor forever, no matter how rarely his own parents came looking for him. 

But she hadn't really thought ahead to what that meant. Looking back, Nino had. He'd been getting more and more restless for weeks leading up to the day he'd left. 

He'd left her a letter, and he'd left her a parents an only slightly shorter note. Marinette hadn't thought to talk to Nino's parents until three days later, when she'd found out they had assumed he was with her the whole time. 

Nino hadn't bothered to leave them a note. They hadn't bothered to wonder where he was. They really never had. 

She'd started to accept then that getting out of their town was the best thing for him. 

That only makes it hurt even more that he'd never gotten all that far away in the first place. 

Adrien doesn't manage to eat very much, although she can tell he tries. He's not coughing as much as he had been earlier, but he hasn't stopped coughing, either, and she's a little afraid the new brightness in his eyes is the start of a fever. 

Plagg had been going for help when she'd met them. Marinette still doesn't know how long they'd been out in those woods. 

"Maybe we should talk about it after you get some more sleep," Marinette suggests, as tactfully as she can, when Adrien pushes himself up against the wall and tries to look alert. He's not succeeding. 

He makes a face at her. "I think I've slept enough." 

Marinette gives the Pokémon, including her own, piled around and on top of him a pointed look. "Looks like not everyone thinks so." 

"I'm fine," Adrien tries to argue, before another coughing fit steals the breath from his lungs. 

"Sure you are, dude," Nino says dryly as he packs the last of their supplies back away. At some point he'd even scrubbed their bowls; he's putting the pot she'd used to boil water away, too. Marinette feels a stab of guilt at the realisation that she'd left Nino all the clean up, but she knows if he'd been genuinely bothered he would have said something. 

She thinks. She doesn't know how he might have changed in the time they've been apart. 

He's still taking on his old half of their camping duties without a word about it, but that could be from the need for something familiar. 

"So." Nino takes a deep breath, bracing his hands against his knees before straightening to look at them both. "We gotta get away from here, you guys know that, right?" 

"The town," Adrien starts immediately, but Nino's already shaking his head. 

"We can come back." Nino turns to Marinette and spreads his hands. "Right, Marinette? We can come back." He glances around the cave, at their Pokémon and their meagre supplies. "But they're definitely already gonna be on the lookout for me, and we're way too close to your dad's place, and they don't know who Marinette is right now but they know I left with someone. They're not dumb, dude, they're gonna figure that one out if we go back and we really don't want that." 

Adrien sags back, leaning on Tikki a little more heavily than she thinks he means to. "What if they catch someone else like they did you, though?" 

"Marinette, have you got your 'dex?" Nino asks, rather than answer Adrien. 

She fumbles a little, surprised at the question. "Uh, I have a really old one, a hand me down. I was the last one to leave, Professor Mendeliev said they were all out of the new prototypes. I'm pretty sure she got it out of the lost and found bin, honestly." She shrugs uncomfortably, remembering how annoyed (and hurt) she'd been and not wanting to admit it. "It doesn't always work all that well so I haven't really used it yet." 

"Will it let you post things on NineTales? That new blog?" Nino turns to hand a berry he must have saved out from the curry to Wayzz, not looking at either Adrien or Marinette. "A lot of the trainers who did come through were asking if I'd used it yet. I think it's gotten popular enough that if we word it right, it'd go viral pretty quickly. Have you used it at all?"

Marinette just barely stops herself from asking if he had. Nino wouldn't have been able to. "No, not really. I have an account, whoever had the 'dex last had it set as the homepage? So I signed up, but I haven't really looked at it much yet." 

Nino shrugs. "Now's a good time to try. Adrien, dude, I know you wanna help, but we- we really gotta get away from here, man. I know they don't have anyone to send after me, 'cause they tried to send _me _after people, an' that didn't, uh, that didn't go so well for them." 

"Nino." Marinette doesn't even try to keep the delight out of her voice. "Nino, what did you do?" 

"Well, uh-" Nino shrugs, his shoulders setting in a self conscious hunch she remembers from when they were much younger. "I mean, I went after them, you know, technically. I just- sort of- chased'em away, instead of bringin' em back?" 

Impulsively, Marinette rounds the fire to hug him. 

She lets go quickly, because she feels Nino tense under her hands in a way he's never done before, but she keeps beaming at him even as she tries to hide the unease that shivers down her spine at his reaction. "You kept them safe." 

"Coulda kept'em safer," Nino mutters, his eyes darting away before returning to her reluctantly. "I tried telling the- the store owners that I couldn't do much without my Pokémon, but they never fell for that." 

"Squirtle." Wayzz has stayed practically attached to Nino's side since they'd reunited, but now the Squirtle leans hard against his human. "Squirtle, squirtle." 

"Yeah it was," Nino tells him. "Don't try that, dude, it _was _my fault. I should've been more careful with you." 

"Squirtle," Wayzz says stubbornly, before looking up abruptly and locking gazes with Tikki and Plagg across the fire. 

Plagg makes no move to leave Adrien, but Tikki very gently disentangles herself from his side and goes to Nino instead, leaning against him opposite from Wayzz. "Clefairy." 

"See?" Marinette asks Nino, amused. She gestures at their Pokémon. "The council has spoken." 

Nino laughs, and if it's a little shaky she's not going to draw attention to it. "You're totally changing the subject, though. We need to get, like, way away from here before we get real deep into any plans." He shifts on his feet a little, pressing back against Wayzz, obviously seeking reassurance. "We gotta go, like, now-ish." 

"But-" Adrien tries, and from the way he freezes up and grits his teeth Marinette's sure he's fighting off another round of coughing. Between the way the Eevee have settled themselves comfortably in his lap and Plagg's hovering, Marinette doesn't think his Pokémon are about to let him try and get up, but he looks like he wants to. 

"I do wanna try, dude," Nino says, subdued, as he reaches out to run a hand over the curve of Wayzz's shell like he's afraid his Squirtle could still disappear. "I just dunno what our chances are like. We're too close to the mansion, man, I think getting you away from here should, like, be our priority right now." 

Very quietly, Adrien says, "It's not right that they can trap you like that." 

Marinette and Nino exchange glances.

"They only really got it to work with me, man, at least in the time I was there," Nino says softly. "Everyone else either had enough money not to get roped in or managed to leave with their Pokémon pretty quick." He looks down, worrying at the edge of his shirt. "Or they paid attention to what I was actually saying and left, but I had to be kinda careful about that, I dunno what they'd have done if they caught me doin' that." 

Marinette doesn't manage to reach out to her friend before Tikki does, the Clefairy trilling softly. 

"It isn't your fault, Nino." Adrien lifts his head again, though he doesn't let go of either Eevee. He does, however, turn to Plagg, and the Gastly is already darting closer. "Sometimes the only way out of a trap is with help." 

Marinette winces. "That brings us back to warning everyone, I think. You really think posting on NineTales will work? It's that popular?" 

"It got real popular real fast, yeah. I think it'll work. I _hope _so. I mean, I don't know how seriously anyone is gonna take, uh, _this_ little group in person, dude." Nino gestures at the rest of them. "We do not exactly scream 'trust us!', you know?"

It's Adrien that Marinette turns to this time, and she sighs when she sees the expected glint in his eyes. "Adrien, I'm not sure that's going to get us taken any _more_ seriously."

"It could, if we make sure to earn a reputation!" He leans back as Plagg circles him and cackles gleefully. "And it gets around me and Nino needing to stay out of towns, too." 

Nino raises a hand. "Little lost, dude. Also, _lots_ of worried." 

"Masks." At Nino's unimpressed look, Marinette elaborates. "We were joking around about masks last night, so that Adrien could come into town with me. But it was a _joke." _

Adrien tries to cross his arms, but the fluffy fox Pokémon in his lap prevent him. "It's not a bad idea, though! We could build a reputation under our secret identities." He looks more and more enthusiastic as he expands on the idea. "You have enough fabric for masks, right? And if we do this and it works, you can get more supplies!" 

Marinette's not too sure about this, if she's honest. She can see too many ways that it could end badly, especially for Adrien and Nino, and she doesn't want to risk her friend's safety- especially when said safety is still tenuous at best. Someone's going to come looking for Adrien eventually, and someone had already been shouting after her and Nino as they hoofed it out of town, and both of her friends are still shaken and scared whether or not they'll admit it. 

And Adrien isn't going to be able to move very quickly on his own, whether or not he'll admit to _that_. Marinette doesn't want to say anything just in case, and she thinks it's too early to tell anyway, but she's increasingly afraid that Adrien's injuries might not be the kind that go away. 

Marinette has had first aid training. Her parents had insisted on teaching her and Nino, and their Pokémon had shown every sign of approval, and Marinette is still watching Adrien very warily for any lingering effects of hypothermia.

He _could_ be so tired simply because he's overwhelmed from getting out into the world after years of isolation (and doesn't that idea make her heart ache). 

But she thinks it's more likely that he's nowhere near as recovered as he's trying to convince them he is. He's clearly trying his hardest to hide exactly how badly he's hurt, she can tell from the way he's spacing his breaths that he's still trying to stave off coughing fits, and his eyes are definitely fever-bright now. He's sitting with his feet drawn up and away from the cave floor, held at an odd stiff angle, and she won't be surprised to find out that he's bled through his socks. 

He really should be going to a hospital, or at least to a healer. Even a Pokécenter would be better than trying to substitute all their potions for actual medical attention, and there's no way they're going to manage to get enough potions anyway. They're already out of what they had, and they can't go into town for more. Almost anything would be better than whatever healing she and Nino can cobble together in a cave, and Marinette knows from Kim that a lot of centers have staff who can and will discreetly treat trainers as well as their Pokémon. 

But if Adrien goes anywhere near a hospital or a 'center, his father is going to find them immediately.

Marinette doesn't want that to happen. 

She surprises herself with how badly she doesn't want that to happen. She's only just met him, but she already doesn't want to lose him. 

Adrien's in this state because he ran from his father, and he was desperate enough to leave without any supplies. Plagg had let him, too, and when Plagg's showing every sign of being just as weirdly overprotective as Tikki is that takes on new significance. 

By the time Marinette had tripped over Adrien Plagg had already been going for help. 

Even then, Plagg had been headed _away_ from the manor. 

Marinette's starting to think masks might be a good idea after all. 

"Um, Marinette?" Nino says, and there's an odd shaky note in his voice that snaps Marinette's attention over to him. 

Rather than say anything else, Nino points silently at Tikki, who's gone back over to Adrien. 

Tikki is glowing. And humming. 

And wagging one finger back and forth, back and forth, hypnotically between herself and Adrien. 

Marinette's mouth drops open and stays that way.

Adrien's staring back at her Clefairy, as still as Marinette's ever seen him, but she can see the way his eyes track to follow Tikki's rhythmic motions. His breath starts to come slower and easier, too, and Marinette has no idea anymore if that's a good sign or not. It's good that he's not coughing, but this isn't- this isn't normal behaviour for her Clefairy. 

This isn't _like _Tikki. Tikki doesn't even like to show herself around most people, and they met Adrien yesterday, and this isn't a battle and Tikki doesn't like to battle anyway and Marinette has no idea why Tikki is using Metronome. Marinette's only barely kept track of what moves Tikki knows, because Tikki never uses them, and Marinette has only seen Metronome a handful of times in years. 

Tikki's swaying closer to Adrien, and Marinette swallows hard even as Adrien's eyes go wide and unfocused. He's stopped moving almost entirely, showing no sign of wanting to put some distance between himself and Tikki. 

Marinette really wants to think that's because Adrien's learning to trust them, but she's afraid that isn't the reason at all. 

"Marinette," Nino says again, strained. "What is Tikki doing?" 

Marinette shakes her head. "She's using Metronome, I don't know what she's doing. It could be _any_-" She stops herself just before she can say _attack_. Just because Adrien looks too out of it now to register that doesn't mean he actually is. "It could be any move she's seen before. I think. I don't know, Nino, she never does this!" 

Adrien makes a soft, startled noise and Marinette's attention jerks back over to him. 

Adrien seems to be struggling to look away from Tikki still, but the Clefairy seems to flash and- 

Green light briefly surrounds Adrien, before sinking into his clothes and skin. He flinches and shuts his eyes at the flash, but then he blinks them back open, surprise spreading slowly over his face. He reaches down and skims a hand gingerly along the side of his foot, wincing a little but looking far more alert. "Did Tikki just-" 

"Heal Pulse," Marinette blurts, the moment it dawns on her, and then hopes she isn't blushing furiously when Adrien refocuses on her. "She used Metronome, and she ended up with Heal Pulse." She shakes her head, frustrated. "But- she acted like she _knew_ it was going to be Heal Pulse." 

"Maybe she did," Adrien says, and his voice sounds slightly strange. 

Before Marinette can figure out the difference, Nino's slipping past her to rest a hand on Adrien's shoulder. "Dude, did it actually work?" 

Gingerly, Adrien flexes one foot, and although he winces it's not the kind of indrawn hiss the same gesture would have pulled from him earlier. "I think it did. Thanks, Tikki," he tells the Clefairy, right before Marinette realises what sounds different to her. 

Not only does he no longer sound hoarse, but the tight thread of pain that had suffused his voice is nearly gone. Marinette had already been so used to it that she'd had trouble placing the change. 

"Thank you, Tikki," Marinette says, and Tikki turns back to her from trilling an acknowledgment to Adrien. 

"So," Nino says, starting to move away and hesitating when Adrien tenses. As soon as Nino resettles his hand on Adrien's shoulder, fingers curling in the loose fabric of his cloak, Adrien relaxes again. 

He doesn't see the troubled look that passes between Nino and Marinette. 

Marinette has the feeling she and Nino are going to be doing that a lot. 

"So," Adrien echoes, tilting his head back against the wall to look up at Nino. "Now what?" 

Marinette offers him her hand and he grasps it immediately, seemingly without thinking about it, and she hauls him to his feet as the Eevees both happily tumble off his lap with several squeaks each. 

Adrien wavers a little, braced between her and Nino, and then takes a deep breath and stands much steadier. 

"Careful, dude," Nino says, softer than Marinette's used to hearing him. She doesn't know if that's because of Adrien, or because of what happened to Nino, and she doesn't know if she'll ever find out. She knows better than to ask. "I dunno if Tikki can pull that off again, and we're out of potions right now. You still gotta take it easy, alright?" 

Marinette realises, slowly, that she's still holding onto Adrien's hands. She feels herself blushing, but that's not enough to make her let go until she's certain that he's going to stay on his feet.

Then, and only then, she collects their packs. She's suddenly glad that they only have the two, because she doesn't want Adrien to carry one right now. 

"Now we get going," Marinette tells both her friends, and she's proud of the way her voice doesn't waver. "I'll post the warning, Nino. We want to get as far away from here as we can. We'll-" She inhales sharply, then lets her breath hiss out between her teeth. "We'll have to skip the next few towns, I think, unless it's an emergency." They're going to have to. She doesn't want to, she wants to get Adrien to a center and a healer, but they're going to have to. 

NineTales had a lot of different resources linked, the few times she'd looked. It had online classes. 

She thinks there was one for healing. 

She thinks it's going to be the very first thing she checks after posting that warning. 

"Hey-" Marinette pauses, studying the Eevee crouched between her and Adrien. One of them, the one she's mentally tagged as hers, tilts her head and whines at her. "Hey, I still dunno what to call our Eevee. Adrien?" 

"Don't call her Adrien, that'll get confusing quick," Adrien tells her, a grin flashing over his features like light off a river. He nods at the darker Eevee. "I was thinking about calling her Noir. If the little lady's okay with that?" he asks the Eevee, who chirps happily back at him. 

"Lady," Marinette says, decisively. "I'll call the other one Lady, then, if she likes it." 

From the way Lady paws at her side and then leaps up to balance on her pack, Marinette thinks her Eevee approves. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (work is TECHNICALLY an essential service- i guess??- so despite the shelter in place order FINALLY kicking in, everything is surreal right now and please can people like. stop deciding nows a good time to catch up on things their pets absolutely do NOT need right this instant? GO HOME, YOUR PETS VACCINES CAN WAIT A FEW WEEKS, YOU SHOULD ALL BE STAYING INSIDE ANYWAY youre all okay with being late by months usually so GO HOME)
> 
> (something in my neighbourhood howls a bit at night sometimes and last night it went on for like AN HOUR instead of the usual like five minutes and kept getting like, louder and more frantic, im not kidding about the surreal thing. im also not investigating that)


End file.
